Our Team

When we say that our service is directed towards young transgender people, we include anyone who generally aligns themselves with the trans community. This includes nonbinary, gender queer, gender non conforming, and agender people, amongst a range of other identities. This also includes people who are in the process of questioning their gender, or who don’t strictly identify as trans but see their experience as akin to that of trans people and believe that our service could benefit them. Whilst we use "trans" as a shorthand to describe a large and diverse range of people, we absolutely respect the terms that our service users believe best describe their experience. 

Run by neurodivergent people, we recognise the significant overlap between gender diversity and neurodiversity. We aim to respect and empower all service users, taking into account their individual needs. 

Whilst we believe our expertise to lie in supporting trans young people and their support systems, we recognise that our service users live complex lives. We do not expect our service users to only discuss issues relating to gender identity with us. We work with a broad range of people, who may be disabled, people of colour, at risk of homelessness, or survivors of abuse. We encourage our service users to bring every aspect of themselves that they are comfortable with when working with us. We will strive to be transparent about where our expertise lies, and where it is best to refer service users on to other services that are best suited to meet their needs. 

We understand that the LGBTQ+ community, as well as LGBTQ+ organisations, may not welcome all people equally. We are particularly sensitive to the ways in which people of colour and disabled community members are marginalised and excluded from services that aim to support the community as a whole. We therefore aim to challenge these patterns of exclusion and take steps to actively support and empower those who may be left behind, or find it a challenge to access other services in the sector. We hope that our intersectional mindset will avoid young people falling through the gaps between other services. 

It is our position as an organisation that trans people are a valuable and indispensable part of the LGBTQ+ community. Whilst our focus is on the transgender community, we never wish to insinuate that the community should sit apart from efforts to improve the wellbeing of all LGBTQ+ people as a whole. Whilst some organisations may advocate that trans people should not  be welcome in the LGBTQ+ community and seek to discredit the long history of trans and LGB advocates working side by side, our view is one of community cohesion, and mutual empowerment. 

We recognise, respect, and celebrate a broad range of gender identities (or lack thereof). This includes non-binary and fluctuating identities, as well as those that have cultural meaning outside of mainstream Western culture. We do not expect that service users make any medical or surgical changes to their body or conform to binary expectations of gender in order to identify as trans. Nor do we expect that all service users experience dysphoria or understand trans identity as a medical condition.