Mental health professionals in Columbus will be trained on how to provide help to transgender and gender-diverse youth under a new program that Columbus City Council wants to fund.
Social work, counseling and LGBTQ leaders believe changes to state law banning gender-affirming care will hurt transgender and other LGBTQ youth. The law, titled House Bill 68, passed last year and restricts medical care for transgender minors and blocks transgender girls from female sports.
Now some organizations want to train hundreds of Columbus-area behavioral healthcare professionals to navigate the new law once it goes into effect next month. The organizations include the Ohio Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, Kaleidoscope Youth Center, Tepper Counseling and the Society for Sexual, Affectional, Intersex, and Gender Expansive Identities of Ohio.
Danielle Smith, Executive Director of The Ohio Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, said LGBTQ youth will have increased stress, trauma and violence because of these new laws. She said it's her profession's job to help and fight back.
"In social work, this is what we were raised to do. Our profession was born to engage in the struggle to demand social justice, and to use our skills to fight for equity. This is our time, particularly in Columbus, to engage," Smith said.
Smith said the groups want to build a six-hour course and trainings and then deploy those trainings to mental health professionals across Ohio. Columbus City Council will vote Monday night on whether or not to give a $60,000 boost to the program.
Specifically, the training will have what Smith said will go beyond the basics in equipping providers to support the complex needs of transgender clients. Smith said the groups want to provide a more in-depth approach to providing ethical gender-affirming care as state law changes and becomes a more hostile political environment toward that issue.
Smith said this includes how to balance mental health professionals' own legal risk and liability as providers with their ethical duty to provide gender-affirming care.
"The passage of House Bill 68 marks an unprecedented change to mental health practice in Ohio since the start of licensure and behavioral health. Never has a law restricted standard practice so explicitly and without any basis in research or best practice standards," Smith said.
Smith said the organizations' goal is to eventually train over 44,000 licensed behavioral healthcare workers in Ohio.
Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin called the new law malicious and said it's irresponsible and unnecessary to restrict gender-affirming care.
"(LGBTQ youth) deserve to feel safe, to feel supported and to feel accepted for who they are. And they should know that there are adults out there looking out for them," Hardin said.
