Expanding and improving trans affirming care in Australia: experiences with healthcare professionals among transgender young people and their parents

ABSTRACT

Access to medical care is significant for many transgender young people and their families, which involves interactions with healthcare professionals. While a trans affirming model is used across Australian paediatric gender clinics, this does not automatically mean that all transgender young people and their parents experience the care they receive as affirming. This article considers the experiences and views of transgender young people (aged 11–17) and their parents in relation to healthcare professionals inside and outside of gender clinics in Australia. Ten qualitative interviews were conducted with parent–child dyads in two Australian states. Key themes relating to healthcare professionals were: differing levels of healthcare professional knowledge and affirmation, quality of service is dependent on individual healthcare professionals, and lack of connected services and referral pathways. The discussion explores specific issues arising from the findings that suggest implications for training for healthcare professionals so as to be better equipped to provide trans affirming clinical care.

KEYWORDS:

• Transgender
• medical care
• healthcare professionals
• young people
• parents
• Australia

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Canadian research team who developed the original project. They also thank the participants for sharing their experiences and views.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by a Flinders University College of Education, Psychology and Social Work research grant. The second author was supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, FT130100087.