Elijah
Video clips
Elijah talks about CAMHS being massively inundated. His daughter passed through there quite quickly.
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CAMHS, I feel for CAMHS, cos here we have a service which is massively, massively inundated. My daughter passed through there quite quickly. I think they just wanted, I think CAMHS, from their point of view is there no issue of suicide is there harm, is there danger here if there’s not, we have to concentrate on those. I understand where they’re coming from. The people there were perfectly nice, helpful and friendly. But when CAMHS found out my daughter was actually seeing an expert in the field, privately. I mean I’m in a fortunate position where I can do that – just popped out straight away at the other side of CAMHS and she’s on the waiting list now for [Gender Identity Development Services] and we’ll see what happens there.
When you say that she was popped out, was it?
Discharged.
Okay. And did they make it clear that it was because she was in a private?
No, they said it was a mixture of no particular danger and in private, yeah. Yeah.
For Elijah deciding on surgery was a momentous’ decision for a 13 year old. He was against those under 18 choosing pills and surgery.
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We’re quite firm on this, because from our point of view, as parents, we need to stay firm a troubled 13 year old cannot make momentous decisions about which go into a life of medicalisation and surgery. So we need to stay firm and compassionate, but firm in this.
Should someone under 18 be able to choose pills and surgery, I’m against that, if I’m honest with you. I don’t think up, if you can vote at 18, I think you can make decisions with your body at that point. You’re teenagers when you’re a stew of raging hormones and confusion to make a long term decision that could sterilise you, remove healthy tissue, I don’t think’s healthy and I’m against it.
Elijah spoke about his child’s name change at school and how he and his wife do not support their child’s wish to change their name.
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So, some arrangements were made. Where it is at the moment, some teachers, she’s got a new, she’s got a name as such at school now. She goes by a nickname with her friends and teachers. it’s not a, yeah, I won’t go into too much detail, because it will be identifying. But she has a nickname which she uses at school. Some teachers use it and some teachers don’t. It seems to be a split between the arts and the sciences who uses it and who doesn’t. And that’s fine as her friends go. We call her naturally by her proper name at home. And we don’t use any pronouns, new pronouns. We’re quite firm on this, because from our point of view, as parents, we need to stay firm a troubled 13 year old cannot make momentous decisions about which go into a life of medicalisation and surgery. So we need to stay firm and compassionate, but firm in this. We don’t want to feed into this. Unfortunately, some elements of the school refer to my daughter as he and make a point of doing so. The health service, when speaking to some healthcare professionals they’ll make a point of saying, he. I don’t believe this is the correct approach.