I usually don‘t like asking for money but I’m desperate. I have been let down by the professionals and I’m stuck. My monthly income usually goes on books for college, travel to and from essential support groups and clothes that help ease my transition - so I essentially have nothing spare.

I had my inital referral to the Tavistock Children’s Gender Clinic in Leeds in July 2016, this was from Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services, which my doctor referred me to in May of that year. The doctor ignored the guidelines published 2 years previously and forced me to go through mental health services - wasting NHS resources.

After an 11 month wait and an earlier appointment being cancelled without my knowledge from my transphobic parent, I had my first appointment at the Children’s clinic in June 2017. After over a year of attending these appointments, I was nearly 18 and ready to start hormones. Tavistock refused to prescribe me hormone blockers, which would have greatly increased my mental wellbeing and stopped what is the result of puberty, but instead sent me home with a letter suggesting that I take ’female hormones’ - the pill. As a trans masculine person, I’m trying to get rid of the oetrogen and progesterone in my body - not increase it! They also told me that it would be quicker to get testosterone through the adult services than go through the process of getting blockers first by the children’s clinic - they lied to me. As a result, I am still not on hormones after starting my medical transition nearly 3 years ago.

At my 5th appointment in May, the Tavistock clinic promised to refer me on to adult services in Sheffield (which is closer to my home in Manchester). They didn‘t. I had my 6th and final appointment in early October 2018, where they discharged me from the service and verbally promised to definitely refer me on.

On the 24th December 2018, I got an email to say that they haven’t recieved my referral to adult services. They have constantly let me down. I also got an email on the same day that offered me an appointment at a private clinic in London called ‘Gendercare’.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the money to travel from Manchester to London, travel around London for the appointment, the cost of the appointments (minimum 2), blood tests and the cost of a hormone prescription. This is where you come in! If there is any chance of being able to donate anything at all, I will be hugely grateful! I’m sick of being stuck in the NHS system, and if I continued on, I won’t get hormones until at least 2020 due to the ever increasing NHS waiting lists - the shortest one is currently around 60 weeks. I want to be myself starting university in September 2019, and it’s just not possible at the moment.

Thank you so much.