Experience Base

A key element of developing any Model of Care is to gain an understanding of the experience of interest holders. This process is termed a review of the Experience Base.

The goals of reviewing the Experience Base are to understand: 

  1. The clinical needs that are important to address from the perspective of service users and people seeking gender healthcare services from the HSE.
  2. The clinical needs that are important to address from the perspective of families and/or caregivers of those seeking gender healthcare services: this is important in the cases of children, young people, and vulnerable and/or dependent adults.
  3. The clinical needs encountered by healthcare professionals who deliver, or who may deliver, gender healthcare services in Ireland, including GPs.

For the new HSE Model of Care for Gender Healthcare, we will be seeking the perspectives of:

  • people using existing gender healthcare services
  • people seeking gender healthcare services from the HSE
  • healthcare professionals providing gender healthcare services, and/or related clinical services (such as GPs)
  • other interest holders, such as the families of people using or seeking gender healthcare services.

This work is now underway.

The first step was to determine how best to contact and include interest holders with lived experience. This was done via consultation with a range of interest holders, including TENI, BelongTo, and LGBT Ireland. A summary of the outcome of this work, and the related Terms of Reference, can be found here.

This step was only the first step of many in engaging interest holders. Our ambition is to contact as many interest holders as possible, and to include a wide range of perspectives and experiences.

This work will be directed via the HSE National Clinical Programme’s Model of Care Working Group which is being convened in November 2025. Terms of reference for this Working Group can be found here: Terms of Reference for HSE National Clinical Programme for Gender Healthcare Model of Care Working Group (docx, size 27.7 KB)

As this work progresses, we will be updating this page with our plans and next steps.