To ask the Minister of Health to detail (i) his Department’s policy on providing puberty blocking medication for people under 18 years old who are transgender; (ii) the current availability of these drugs; and (iii) the process by which people under 18 years old, or their parents, can avail of them.

(i) The Knowing Our Identity Service based within the Belfast Trust provides a range of treatment and support provided, which are designed to be clinically appropriate and reflect a staged approach in terms of psychological support and assessment. Subsequent physical assessment and intervention in the form of puberty blockers were provided in keeping with national and international guidelines.

(ii) Knowing Our Identity has offered access to gender affirming endocrine interventions (e.g. puberty blockers) for young people following psychological assessment and consideration since 2014. However, due to limited Adult Gender provision with growing waiting lists to be seen in the Adult Gender Identity Service there was no readily available transition pathway for young people at age 18 to allow for safe continuation of endocrine treatment. There was also a lack of psychological support alongside medical interventions. This led to changes to the service specification for Knowing Our Identity in March 2020 whereby new referrals after this date would no longer have access to the endocrine path.

(iii) Any young person who had been referred to Knowing Our Identity before March 2020 will have access to these drugs through the endocrine pathway. This pathway was closed after March 2020, due to the limited Adult Gender provision. There is therefore no access to these drugs for this cohort.