Leeds transgender children’s charity Mermaids awarded £500,000 after review into grant following online outcry

The National Lottery Community Fund grant was subjected to the review in December after an outcry online by people who are critical of the charity and its methods.

Chief Executive Susie Green said: “All the things that have been said about what we do and how we operate have been independently examined and found to be without any grounds. I’m so pleased for our families and young people.”

The Yeadon-based charity has come under huge scrutiny over the past couple of years.

As the only UK-wide charity providing information, advice and support for transgender or gender non-conforming children and their families, it is at the centre of heated debate about how to treat transgender children and what is behind the huge rise in the number of children questioning their gender.

The National Lottery said it ‘did not find any grounds to withhold funding from Mermaids UK’ and approved the grant over a period of five years.

But its report also raised some concerns about Mermaids’ operations and identified some areas in which it should ‘improve practice, governance, relationship management and quality assurance.’ Mrs Green said the charity was working on those issues.

Funding will go towards setting up 45 support groups across the country, providing more training for organisations such as schools as the NHS and facilitating more research into transgender young people and their families with the help of academics.

Mrs Green said the research would look at outcomes for children who use her service, ‘what makes a parent supportive and what information helps them to support their child’ and the ‘impact of supportive and non-supportive parents on transgender children’, amongst other things.

“These are really exciting next steps,” Mrs Green. “This is going to make such a difference.”

Critics of Mermaids claim its a group that is too driven by ideology, that it relies on pseudo-scientific claims about gender, and that it promotes life-changing surgery to parents of children who are questioning their gender.

Mrs Green took her transgender daughter to Thailand, aged 16, for surgery which is illegal in the UK.

Mrs Green stressed that Mermaids is not involved in the clinical care of children.

Stephanie Davies-Arai, of the parents’ group Transgender Trend, said when the grant was first announced: “Funding this agenda will lead to more young people who regret such life-changing harms to their bodies.”