Help me access medical transition

My name is Jamie-Leigh, and I spent 5 years thinking I was on the NHS Gender Clinic waiting list. I was not.

Update 20 April 2025: The new goal is £4,000. The UK is growing hostile and I need the safety net.

Update 12 March 2025: The new goal is £1,250. I am fundraising the bare minimum.

Update 06 January 2025: The new goal is £1,000. The original goal was £3,000.

Full details of all updates are available in the "correct" update section of this fundraiser. The original story is kept here for transparency.

Summary (TLDR):

I am transgender and I need to access medical care for my transition. My gender dysphoria is now so severe that I'm not able to live a comfortable, happy, or safe life. The waiting list for accessing trans healthcare on the NHS is upwards of 5 years. I cannot wait (another) five years, so I'm trying to access private care until I am seen by the NHS. I do not have the money to do this as I'm disabled and cannot work. I'm currently only fundraising my access to hormones, as I hope to be seen by the NHS before I need surgery.

My story:

I initially spoke to my GP in April 2019 to discuss getting referred to an NHS gender clinic, and was told the referral had been sent off. I knew the waiting list was long (and got significantly longer during the pandemic) but it was a glimmer of hope on the horizon that kept me going.

After reaching a breaking point at the start of 2024 I reached out to the Tavistock clinic to confirm that I was on the list, only to find out my referral had never been received by the clinic. I spoke to my GP again but they said that the referral had been entirely lost in their system. The clinic was unable to honour the original referral date, so a new referral was created in February - sending me straight to the bottom of the list.

In June 2024, the clinic reported that they were offering first appointments to patients referred in December 2018:

(Source: The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust)

At a rate of 80 appointments a month, it will take them around 194 months to get through 15 thousand referrals currently pending. That's 16 years.

I have been dealing with gender dysphoria since I was a child. For much of my teenage years, the hope of being seen at an NHS clinic kept me positive. Over the last few years, my general mental health has been degrading due to many things happening at once, and I have been experiencing some of the darkest moments of my life with increasing frequency. Finding out that I was never on the list - and that I would have to face another five (or more) years waiting to be seen - has taken me closer to the edge than I have ever been before, and I find myself considering the dangerous option of self medicating without medical support.

I cannot survive another five years with my dysphoria.

My goal:

Private gender care in the UK is expensive, and I am unable to work due to my disabilities. As such, I have made the incredibly difficult decision to begin my medical transition privately for the sake of my mental health and self-preservation. I will need help to achieve my goal. I aim to have been on hormonal therapy for at least one year by the time I graduate university in 2027. Starting private hormonal treatment now will be enough to help me survive until I can see an NHS gender clinic and continue my medical transition from there. I am currently only fundraising enough to help me access the beginning of my medical journey.

I will be going with the Harley St Gender Clinic for the diagnosis of gender dysphoria and recommendation for hormonal therapy. Their initial fees are £575 - though I am budgeting for one follow up appointment with this clinic, at a price of £350. After obtaining the diagnosis and recommendation to begin medical treatment, I will be using The Gender Hormone Clinic to access to hormones. Their initial fees are £250, plus £55 a month for two years of follow up care, resulting in a cost of £1,570. This brings the immediate cost of my medical transition to £2,495. The additional £505 will be used to help cover the cost of private blood tests if my GP refuses to do them, travel to in-person appointments/blood tests, and a new binder to replace the very worn out one I have now to alleviate my dysphoria in the short term.

Thank you

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