Experiences of parents and carers of young trans and gender diverse people

We've had mixed experiences with CAMHS. We had let's see, the consultant, would it be a consultant? The psychiatrist anyway at CAMHS who prescribed Fluoxetine for [name of participant’s daughter], cause she was, had a very, very low mood. He was really helpful. And she had two different therapists who she worked with one of those, that didn't work at all. And again, he had more of a kind of let's sit and talk about all of this. Let's go over it all. And, and she found that very, very distressing and very, very annoying. But she also then had another therapist who just got the measure of her better. And would do things like [name of participant’s daughter] would bring the dog to the appointment. And they would go for a walk with the dog, in the park and just have a chat. And then the dog would come back in the office and sit on the chair while they finished off. And so she was really, I think the difference was that one of them was a very, I don't really know how to say, I don't really know how to say it, like a very sort of psychoanalytical kind of you know, wanting to talk about all these things, whereas the one that worked well was a bit more like a mum, you know, kind of a bit more down to earth, a little bit more practical. And so that, that then worked out really well. But we did find there was a couple of things with CAMHS so I don't think we ever had a letter from CAMHS that used her correct name or pronouns on it, even after we gave them the Deed Poll several times. They just didn't have anything in place for that. They still had the, they still had you know like the toilets. There was a men’s toilet and a women's toilet. There was just no need. They were single occupancy cub—do you know what I mean? There was nothing. You could tell that they didn't really, you could tell they didn't really know anything about gender diversity and it was really clear.

It wasn't even as black and white as that. They didn't actually, it wasn't a specific time when they came out. They just started having issues I guess really the turning point really was the bullying at school, which was because of the isolation at school, because they didn't fit into their kind of gender group. They weren't a boy, so they didn't hang with the boys. But they didn't feel they were a girl, so they didn't have a lot of friends at all. They only really had one friend at school who it turns out now has come out as a lesbian, as a gay female who could maybe relate to my child as a trans child. But I don't think they even discussed whether they were gay or trans. I don't think it ever came up in conversation. And certainly the coming out thing wasn't a big announcement, I'm coming out, it was a gradual thing which kind of started really with the CAMHS appointments, which started mainly because of the friction between mum and child. Mum looked for help via CAMHS and CAMHS couldn't put a finger on it, initially. We, certainly the first interview I went to, the therapist there one week said, my child was PTSD. The next time we went they were bipolar. The next time they went they were autistic. They were, it was kind of they were, pigeon holed, but they couldn't find the right hole. And it wasn't until my child was saying about gender issues that gender even came up. That was probably the first time I ever was aware of anything gender related at all. They brought it up at a CAMHS appointment. And eventually, CAMHS referred us onto the [Gender Identity Development Services]. And at that point, it was like the flood gates opened. Suddenly, my child knew where they were and could relate to the therapists and suddenly said, ''Finally, somebody's taken me seriously. Somebody seems to understand.'' And so it was like the flood gates, flood gates had opened. And everything then started to fall into place.

It feels CAMHS has felt a bit disappointing, to be honest because the initial treatment that he was offered, the CBT, nothing to do with being trans just to do with self-harm and his suicidal thoughts. We didn’t feel ever gave him the techniques and support. I contacted them and said, you know, ‘I want to be able to help him.’ His six sessions are coming to an end. Are their techniques, is there something I can learn, something I can do? But really he was just told to do things like, ‘If you are feeling that way, watch the telly.’ And stuff like that. So, you know, really unhelpful. And we knew from the school that other people had that experience of this particular counsellor. So, nothing personal, she was a really nice lady. But just wasn’t doing what we needed. So, I think that was a poor experience. We then were told, you’re not gonna get any help. And it’s all, you feel this way just because you are trans. But actually the fact that he is trans, he does need support, even if that were all it were. I feel that he does need support, because his life is more complicated. He has the normal teenage stuff. But he has all that on top as well. So that’s been, that’s been disappointing, so far. We have been, once the GP referred us we had another assessment with CAMHS which was again really upsetting. They told him to try mindfulness colouring, which was amazing. Didn’t want to see me even though I had made the initial and I was there, I took time off work. I was there with him. And usually they’ll see me with him afterwards. And we had said how it impacts the family and everything. And that was one of our concerns. But they didn’t want to see me. So, we were expecting nothing from that. And we were like, well, we’ll wait and then we’ll complain and da, da, da. But he has been put on the waiting list. So, that’s a positive. But I am, my concern is that he’ll have his six sessions and then while he’s on the waiting list there doesn’t seem to be anything to keep an eye on him, while he’s on that waiting list.

It was always approached from a cisnormative perspective. So there was an assumption that maybe it was a phase and he’d grow out of it. There was a perspective that the norm is to be cis. Because he had been involved with CAMHS for a long time. Their perspective was that it was part of a mental health difficulty.
So it felt this was part of a mental health issue but it’s coming from a much bigger, wider picture, the wider picture. But they couldn’t see that which maybe actually was part of the problem.

I think the difficulty with CAMHS had been partly because we hadn't come out initially and said, ''This is our problem.'' And I think because of their cuts in funding they were under time pressure to get us through and they didn't see the necessity for keeping her on. But it was, it was difficult when we were on the waiting list without support. Just desperately wanting to go through it. And at that point she was going through puberty and that was creating an awful lot of stress. I didn't know where to go. And nor did she, obviously.

And at that point we then got the emergency appointment with CAMHS. And at the same time as our referral came through which had basically taken from the September to just on January. It was, you know, [sighs] I'd already been flagging it up, which is a bit disappointing and saying how desperate we were, but hey ho [sighs]. And at CAMHS the therapist was very supportive. But I was very aware that they had a very limited timeframe and we did feel very much that we were on a programme of 12 weeks in and out, and you had to be sorted by then. She still hadn't told me at that point what the problem was. Although, I was starting to get a feel for it [sighs]. So, I had begged them, I literally had begged them to carry on keeping her, keeping her on until the next start of (school) year, because I knew trying to get her to go back into school at the start of that year would be horrendous. And they did agree but we were seeing a different therapist at that point. And I don't know what that after, we'd had various incidents where she'd had actually picked her up from school to go to her therapist session and she cut herself while in the classroom. So I was trying to alert school and the school were trying to help, but there wasn't very much provision in school going back. So CAMHS eventually, just before the first therapist ended, she told me what the problem was that she was trans. And but she didn't, she couldn't get the courage up to tell the therapist. And I didn't want to circumvent how she actually felt. And eventually we managed to tell the other therapist and I knew that they were supposed to do a referral to CAMHS, not to CAMHS to the (GIDS) adolescent services, but I was told at that point that they didn't handle things like that and we were just basically cut loose and left to float.