Blogs Fostering

Firstly, there are some terms I have found useful to know...

Cis

'Cis' stands for 'cisgender'. This is a term which might be used by your young person to refer to the gender presumed at birth.

The difference between gender identity and sexuality.

It might sound obvious, but it is important to understand, for example, that a transgender girl (i.e. cis male) who is attracted to girls may identify as gay. I found it useful to discuss with my young person the difference between someone’s gender identity and how they chose to express it. For example – it is fine to identify as female but not choose to express that through wearing particularly gendered clothing, or vice versa – and it might be a journey for that young person to discover what they want to do rather than knowing straight away.

Have a pre-agreed plan...

for what your young person would like you to do if misgendered by members of the public/others in various settings whilst you are with them.

Some organisations are far better at supporting transgender young people...

for example on summer camps/holiday activities. Usually, a phone call in advance will allow you to gauge this and help create positive experiences (e.g. what is your policy on toilets? etc – if they haven’t thought about that, it tells you quite a lot).

Shopping for clothing could be difficult/stressful...

It might be helpful to (with consent obviously) have an idea of your young person's key measurements so that you can (with the help of the internet) work out which size clothes in that particular shop might fit the best – or order online to make trying things out easier.

Try supporting someone through a social transition in stages...

Although it might be different for each young person, in my experience of supporting someone through a social transition, it worked very well to do this in stages (i.e. first at home, then out to new places, then with new visitors to the home, then out to all places, then finally at school). We agreed on this with the young person’s social worker and parent.

This approach to trying transition at home first was explained in that it meant the young person could become an expert in wearing clothes of that gender – something a cis-gender young person had already had many years of practice – so that by the time she was doing this at school she had a good level of confidence which would help.

It may be necessary to have conversations with the parents of other children in your social network (and your young person) to understand what they intend to tell their children about your transgender young person. This can avoid confusion amongst younger children if, for example, your transgender girl is using the male public toilets whilst out on a trip somewhere, for example.

Get to know some transgender influencers on social media...

so that you can evaluate which are positive and watch them with your young person. For example, we did this to learn how to put make-up on.

Be aware that your young person may see an almost constant stream of problematic content on TikTok including (for example) highlighting the high rate of suicide attempts by transgender young people. It is worth reading the research in that area which is freely available and considering how to address that topic.