Father: He had self-referred himself through his GP at university to Gender Identity Services, but where he was in that part of the country, the waiting list was about four years. It was crazy. So, I decided that I would pay to see a gender specialist privatelyat least for an initial consultation.

Mother: That’s right, yes.

Father: So, he went off to see himand sort of saw him once, I think or and did an assessment and I thought, yes, yeah, he thought he—

Mother: This was the main issue.

Father: This was an issue, he would qualify as suffering from gender dysphoria. And then, recommended that he sort of start a hormone therapy. And so then did a referral to an endocrinologist again, privately who started, who did the initial prescription for hormone therapy, because it was then carried out by the local GP. So, sort of started him on that track. Which he was, obviously, when he was, he was very happy there. We were very relieved about that. That did seem to help a lot, didn’t it? The anxiety and depression didn’t go away. But it made him, he was certainly very happy about that.

So those first four appointments [at GIDS] were fine and we went along kind of every month. You know, we were just kind of I suppose just discussing where we were at that particular moment in time. The sorts of things that we’d been talking about. How my son was feeling. You know, we separated off into two separate rooms, you know, I talked to one of the therapists, my son would, you know, talk to the other. There wasn’t, to me it was very much a kind of assessment period that they, you know, it seems that there was a lot of us talking and a lot of them making notes. So it wasn’t, there wasn’t really a kind of any therapeutic kind of involvement in that. And then we kind of got referred down to almost, referred down to [hospital] to get blockers. And so that was probably about another don’t know, six, eight weeks or something like that for the first appointment for that. So, there was very much a kind of focus on, okay, so he’s gonna go down there. I had, went down and had the assessment in [city]. So, the first meeting was there some initial kind of blood tests and scans and then we had sort of go back down to them about a few months few weeks later in order to sign the forms both my son and myself had to sign sort of individually the consent, so really there was like this multiple page kind of consent form. I think they’d been sent it previously as well to look at. And to have, you know, the additional scans before they went, Okay, that’s it. We are gonna approve your son to have blockers. The GP hopefully would at least be on board to do that. But so we were very much kind of looking at, you know, that journey and that pathway of making that happen. It then carries on, we’d have I can’t remember if he had appointments like every month, initially or if it went to every three months.

At that point, your son has got the blockers?

So, he got the blockers so, he from when he came out – so he came out in August and then we had the first appointment at the end of December. And then he got referred down to [hospital] in April. And then he got the blockers.

The first meeting that we had was because we had this issue about referral to endocrinology. The reason that endocrinology refused to accept our referral was because [name of participant’s child] was already taking the blocker. And I then had to, I then had to point out that actually, as he was entitled to access private medical treatment as well as NHS treatment, at the same time. And that we could not be refused NHS treatment, because we were accessing private treatment. And, at that point, it, I had, I said I didn’t understand why, you know, what the issue was with endocrinology and I wanted to better understand that. And at that point then, also I think because I was making waves about the fact that my son was being treated differently because we refused to allow him to be assessed along this, the usual path of monitoring his increasing distress over time. And I called into question then the appropriateness of not bringing endocrinology in sooner. So that, the child could be therapeutically and psychologically assessed with this head space that a child of any given age ought to be capable of being assessed outside of that developing distress pattern and self, you know, movement towards self-harm. And it was at that juncture that then [hospital], a member of the, senior member of the [hospital] endocrinology team came to an adult meeting with the therapists that were treating my son. And it was quite a, it was quite a difficult meeting, because we felt that we were having to challenge everything that was being suggested. And it felt quite, it felt quite difficult to me being in that meeting, even though I am quite robust and I’m used to speaking publicly and to professionals and challenging professionals in my line of work, it still felt difficult because the subject matter was so emotive, for me. But, you know, we, I don’t think we really got any answers. We made our views clear. I don’t think we really got any answers. But one thing that we all did agree on was that the meeting had been useful insofar as having both disciplines there were concerned. And subsequently then we were given an appointment for a separate meeting at [hospital] for endocrinology. And so, we’ve been, because I have asked at each juncture that somebody, whenever we are at [hospital] I’ve asked that somebody from the [Gender Identity Development Services] be there, so that we continue with this joined up thinking. I’m not sure how much actual difference it’s making in practice. But it feels much more coherent in that to be in those meetings and to have both sides of the same coin in the same room.

They just said, well they said because we were using an internet service they wouldn’t provide monitoring bloods for that. And they didnt feel they had the expertise to actually take over the prescribing, even though they are prescribing HRT for women, all day, every day. And it’s essentially the same. So I was continuing to complain to all the bodies that I could complain to. And I wrote back to them and I said, this is a list of everybody that I’m complaining to about your practice. I would urge you to reconsider your decision and they did reconsider their decision. So she called us in and said, We genuinely don’t feel able to do the prescribing ourselves, but what we will do is we will refer your child to an endocrinologist. Let them come up with a prescription and then well take over the bridging medicatio and that’s exactly what happened. So we had the appointment with the endocrinologist I think in February of this year. And prescribing started immediately. They put her on much better medication than she was on before. I don’t mean better, but sort of potentially stronger and a proper T blocker, that she’s on now, which is, you know, better for the hair loss and, and everything. And you know, and she feels really good. So we stopped using the internet provider, who had been brilliant, really brilliant throughout. But it’s great to have somebody in our local practice now who somebody that we can see face-face and, you know, we feel like [name of participant’s child]’s care is a part of her trans care is a part of her overall medical care, rather than us having to take that part out to somebody else who was willing to treat her.