Free and low-cost online subclinical services for minors

I have begun creating this directory. Please feel free to add more resources, and please share in relevant spaces. 

From the intro: This is intended to be a listing of affordable online subclinical services serving those under 18. The intention here is to provide resources for families whose child's needs are not currently at the level of requiring medical therapies (or who have financial difficulty in accessing these), but are higher than requiring no formal support. 

Resources should focus on those provided by folks with professional degrees or connection to a mainstream clinical or social services organization, as the intention here is that families are able to assure schools and pediatricians that their child is receiving appropriate services. 

While the owner of this resource places high value on lived experience and community-based healing over "evidence-based practices,"* resources here should be free of blatant pseudoscientific approaches and must be trauma-informed, antiracist, queer/transgender-inclusive, neurodiversity-affirming, disability-positive, fat-positive, and so forth. Religious resources may be included, provided they are truly inclusive, including of those who express skepticism toward their faith background or may be looking to leave it. No ABA providers may be included, unless they publicly and consistently identify as someone who has left the field due to its problematic nature. 

*Research is important, and I constantly seek it out and cite it – or cite that no research has been done that adequately takes into account the intersections at play in the situation at hand. The majority of research, particularly that which is used in recommending and funding treatment approaches, reflects ableism and cultural bias. We absolutely should be looking at well-designed studies that are done or advised by people of the same demographics as those being studied. "Evidence-based practice" literature usually isn't this. 

Financial disclosure: One of my own LGBTQ+/neurodivergent youth spaces is included. I do make money off of this, though you can see based on the prices that this was not my primary goal in creating the space. 

Can we add a little nuance to the discussions of trans kids who aren't out to their parents?

Let me start by saying that of course kids (cis, trans, unsure, and so forth) should all have the freedom to use a name in any space and ask that this not be shared with their parents.

What I am tired of seeing is the rhetoric from well-meaning queer folks and allies of "if your kid is only out at school, this means they feel unsafe telling you they are trans, so you have failed as a parent."

As someone who has worked with literally thousands of trans and gender-expansive kids, this just doesn't follow. Yes, sometimes I have kids tell me their parents are transphobic and would react in unsupportive ways. This is a real thing that happens, and which we need to be aware of and be prepared to address.

What happens much more frequently is that kids tell me they know their parents are supportive of trans folks in general, their parents often even are queer/trans themselves, and the issue isn't about transphobic parents, but just that they are wanting to experiment and practice experiencing how less-important people respond to a new name/gender before they are ready to share with the most-important people in their lives.

I don't want to 100% liken someone's gender identity or expression to a hobby, as we often have hobbies that we pick up and quickly discard, and I don't want to feed into the transphobic "it's a phase; they'll get over it" rhetoric. However, I do think we need to make less of a big deal overall with people exploring gender. It's completely normalized for cis children to try on different names and forms of self-expression, especially during early adolescence. Why should it be extremely different for a cis middle-schooler to take on a goth expression and ask to be called Raven or Onyx than for another middle-schooler exploring identity to include a name and pronouns that differ from their birth sex? So along these lines, do people assume that a child has horrible abusive parents if they aren't planning on mentioning just yet that they wear black lipstick at school and have their friends call them Onyx? Probably not. Does this suddenly change if Onyx uses pronouns that differ from the ones their parents know? It shouldn't. For many adolescents, it's just easier to try something on with people who are less close and whose opinions matter less. It might be easier to have kids in the cafeteria tell you something doesn't really work for you than to observe and process your parents' reaction.

Let's focus more on allowing young people to live in the here and now. If they want to be called a particular name and use particular pronouns for any reason, that should always just be their choice. It doesn't need to involve parental permission, it doesn't need to be likened to any sort of "concern" or mental health issue that their parents need to be informed about, and it doesn't need to be a big deal. Let's just let people be called what they want, regardless of the reason. 

More free Zoom LMHC CEUs

I was actually looking for free yoga classes, and found that there are hundreds of them on eventbrite (set location to "online," set price to only free offerings). My family and I have done a few classes and have found them to be pretty solid. Many of the classes are one-time offerings from healthcare organizations and community centers. Some are organizations that look a bit culty, but I'm able to look past that for a free class where I can log right off at the end and don't have to engage in small talk.

One of the yoga classes I found was for professionals, and mentioned CEUs. I assumed that they would be CEUs for one of the professions that doesn't require formal approval, but was surprised to see that the organization offers NAADAC CEUs, which is an NBCC-approved provider. The organization is Aliya Academy, and they have a number of different free trainings offering 1 CEU each. Most of them are focused on those who have substance use disorders, as this is the organization's mission. 

If you've read my blog before, you know my feeling about CEUs: There is nothing in place to assess whether clinicians are actually engaging in relevant learning and applying it to our work. CEU credits do not accomplish this goal. Those of us who are committed to practicing ethically and effectively are constantly engaged in learning through keeping up on research and listening to experiences of marginalized people, and our participation in formal CEU courses is pretty immaterial. CEUs are just a formality we must go through, most of the available courses are massively overpriced yet contain outdated and disturbingly biased content, so we might as well go with free CEUs of potentially questionable quality. I personally get my actual continuing education by reading and watching content from autistic and other disabled folks, former foster youth, systems-involved parents, people affected by carceral systems, and so forth. I get my CEU credits by attending Zoom workshops that explain what ADHD or depression is –– usually badly, with a white-middle class bias, and with no content from folks with the conditions –– and wonder how there are licensed clinicians who do not already know this material.

William James College is also hosting a free Zoom CEU workshop on stalking behavior in autistic folks. It doesn't appear to have any content from actual autistic folks, so I'm skeptical, but it's free. It's worth signing up for their CEU e-mails, as they frequently have free ones. A few have actually been quite good and have been largely based on lived experience, while others have been typically poor-quality CEUs of things that people should already know. 

[Usual disclaimer that I am not affiliated with these organizations. I have no experience with Aliya Academy and minimal experience with WJC. I am not specifically endorsing the trainings. I post free and low-cost CEUs I encounter for the reasons stated above.]