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Llais response to availability of puberty blockers consultation

Llais is an independent statutory body, set up by the Welsh Government to give the people of Wales a strong voice in the planning and delivery of their health and social care services – locally, regionally, and nationally. We provide a complaints advocacy service, supporting people to raise a concern or complaint about NHS or social care services. Our trained, dedicated complaints advocacy staff provide free, independent, and confidential assistance.

During the development of our response to this consultation, we have consulted with our public engagement teams, including our complaints advocacy service.

We are currently not committing to a position as we have not had any feedback specifically on the availability of puberty blockers to date from people in Wales.

However, across our engagement activities we have heard from the LGBTQ+ community of the negative impact of limited access to gender services on their mental health.

Our primary concern is that this consultation hears from, and fully considers the responses, of those with lived experience.

You have highlighted that this is a targeted consultation and has been sent to recipients in representative organisations only. It has not been detailed how these organisations were selected for involvement.

We recommend that wider engagement with individuals with experience of gender incongruence is undertaken, given the potential impact of the ban.

We would welcome more detail on how the decision to make the emergency order permanent was made and would be happy to work with you on any future consultation phases to ensure citizen voice is at the heart of decision making. 

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