Foster Care Training

Providers are legally and ethically called to provide affirmative care and support for transgender and gender expansive children, adolescents, and families. Service providers, whether working in schools, agencies, or private practices, seek to affirm all clients in a supportive and compassionate manner. This presentation will provide clinicians with information and resources for honing skills for advocating and supporting transgender and gender-expansive children and adolescents in multiple settings. ABSTRACT: Service providers are called upon to develop knowledge, skills, and awareness in order to increase competence in working with transgender and gender expansive (TGE) individuals (Burnes et al., 2010). Providers will certainly work with transgender and gender-expansive (TGE) individuals and need to develop competence in order to effectively work with this population. Given the scarcity of literature on the use of play to support TGE individuals and the fact that play providers working in the school setting are in a prime position to provide needed support and advocacy, this presentation (information from published article Byrd, Lorelle, and Donald, 2021) provides direction on how to effectively work with TGE children using Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT). This presentation addresses challenges TGE children encounter and notes how to use the skills and goals of CCPT in a TGE affirming way, using a case study and detailed examples of responses. How providers working in schools can work with parents/caregivers and advocate in the school setting are also included. This information and skills presented can apply across settings and types of play provider, and counselors in all settings can make use of Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT) to support TGE children.