Deaths related to GIDS 1989 to date

Reference: 23-24094

Date response sent: 13/07/2023

Details of enquiry

Under the freedom of information act I would like to request the following information:

The number of deaths related to the Gender Identity development service by year since its establishment in 1989.

Response sent

The Trust routinely receives Freedom of Information requests about deaths of service users and the potential causes, including suicide.

These tend to be requests linked to the whole of the Trust or linked to specific services.  The Trust recognises that there is a significant public interest argument linked to disclosure of this information but at the same time the number of requests linked to variations of the data places a significant cost burden on the Trust and takes staff away from other roles that are critical to maintain services at the Trust.

The Trust will only release information about deaths (including suicide) retrospectively and in line with the its publication schedule including publication of the Quality Accounts which are placed into the public domain on its website.

Where the Trust has published mortality data, it can be found at:

a. Annual reports and quality accounts (tavistockandportman.nhs.uk)

b. Board meetings and board papers (tavistockandportman.nhs.uk)

c. Freedom of information disclosure log (tavistockandportman.nhs.uk)

The rationale for this approach is:

1. The Trust complies with “The revised guidance on reporting suicide and severe self-harm to NRLS for all providers except those providing specialist mental health services” issued by the National Patients Safety Agency  (2012).
   • Other providers will meet their responsibilities by ensuring they pass on any information that indicates suicide or self-harm has occurred to the relevant specialist mental health trust so they can report it
   • That means that the Trust will hold information where it has been notified but it may take up to two-three years at times for relevant data to be made available to it and/or validated – a death may be related to other causes, eg cancer,  and may be entirely unrelated to the services that the Trust was providing.

This means that, retrospectively, the Trust’s mortality data can change over time.

• Where the coroner contacts the Trust and states that ‘Action Should be Taken’, the Trust will respond within the required framework

2. Whenever Inquests are held, linked to a Prevention of Future Deaths report (Regulation 28 Report to Prevent Future Deaths), the name of the deceased will be published and placed into the public domain, however the Trust does not publish this level of detail, because it is publicly accessible via other means, which under FOIA s21 means that it does not have to be provided again by the Trust.
3. Regarding the provision of statistical mortality data you have requested, the Trust follows guidance from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) on disclosure control to protect confidentiality within death statistics, and will not be reporting mortality numbers by service, due to the low number of service users who may be referenced.
   • Practical examples of where this has been applied elsewhere are:
     • National Confidentiality Inquiry in Suicide and Safety in Mental Health
     • Ministry of Defence Suicides in the UK regular armed forces: Annual summary and trends over time 1 January 1984 to 31 December 2020
   • The Trust cannot provide mortality information pre-2010 as this data would be held in a different format, which we have estimated would take over eighteen hours to access, interrogate, extract, requiring more resources than that provisioned under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to extract.  Exemption under Section 12 of FOIA 2000 provides for refusal of requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours/£450 at a generic £25/hour.

Please note that information provided under FOIA relates to information held by this Trust at the date on which the request was made.