This is on point. I'm Megna Chocrobardi. Until this past year, the Tavistock Gender

Identity Development Service was the UK's only center for treating children suffering

from gender dysphoria. In March 2022, an independent report commissioned by Britain's National

Health Service found that the type of care provided at Tavistock was, quote, not safe or

viable as a long-term option for the care of young people with gender-related distress.

It also found that the center had not used customary control measures that are typically in

place when new treatments are introduced, nor had the center collected consistent data

on its patients and treatments. Following the report, the National Health Service decided

to close the Tavistock Center and find a new model of care for gender questioning young

people. Hannah Barnes is an investigations producer at News Night, one of the BBC's

flagship television news programs, and she writes about what happened at Tavistock in

her new book Time to Think, the inside story of the collapse of the Tavistock Gender

Service for Children, and she joins us today from London. Hannah Barnes, welcome to on point.

Thank you so much for having me. So when the gender identity development clinic was first

opened in London in 1989, what was its original mission?

Its original mission was to provide a space for a very small group of very distressed children

and young people to talk about the difficulties they might be having with their gender. So

it originally opened at another London hospital. But really in those early years we were talking

a couple of handfuls of young people each year, I think actually there were only two in

the first year. And it provided a space for young people and their families to go and

talk about what they were going through. The idea was always that it wouldn't aim to change

a young person's gender identity, but would help them tolerate the distress they were experiencing,

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