Ms Meaghan Storey1
1University Of Melbourne/University of Manchester, Melbourne, Australia
Biography:
Meaghan Storey is a Cookson Scholar PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne and the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on access to gender services from minors.
Abstract:
Access to gender services for children and minors has become a political focal point in recent years. This increased politicisation has underscored the need to protect minors from potential harm. One of the proposed ways to ‘protect’ children from such harm is to limit or delay access to gender services and medical interventions, such as puberty blockers and gender affirming hormones, until these children are adults. From a clinical point of view, withholding or delaying access to gender services does not have this protective effect – research shows that preventing access to gender care has significant detrimental effects to minors’ health and well-being. Instead, clinicians rely on clinical guidelines and criteria to ensure treatment is appropriate for a given patient. Clinical criteria can therefore act as a safeguard or gatekeeping measure, setting out the parameters for accessing gender services. However, it is unclear if the minors accessing these services feel these parameters are appropriate or reflective of their experiences. Moreover, it is unclear how minors negotiate and interact with these guidelines. This session will rely on the preliminary findings from the author’s empirical PhD research gathering patients’ perspectives of clinical guidelines and requirements. By interviewing young adults from across Australia about their perspectives and experiences accessing gender services as a minor, this session will consider some of the practical and ethical challenges that arise when minors feel they need to meet clinical guidelines in order to access care.