Lives and experiences of trans children and young people the focus of latest edition of Educational and Child Psychology

It includes papers on the experience of gender-diverse children in school, an exploratory study of the retrospective educational experiences of young intersex adults, and the experiences and practices of educational psychologists when working with and supporting autistic, gender-diverse children.

The editors of ECP March 2022, Cora Sargeant, Dan O'Hare, Rachel Cole and Cathy Atkinson, have shared their thoughts on the issue, and the next steps for the profession as it navigates this important area of work.

"As a community, professional psychology has been reflecting inward, considering our role in the ongoing marginalisation of members of the communities we serve. This is a difficult and important piece of work for which we are all responsible, together.

We should be good at this, of course - professional psychologists are as much architects of environmental and systemic change as we are of profound personal growth, and we are a driving force for inclusion.

Right now, one of the communities we serve being actively marginalised around the world is that of LGBT+ children and young people.

Last year the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly condemned the rise of hate speech, violence, and hate crime against LGBTI people across its member states and 'it moreover condemns with particular force the extensive and often virulent attacks on the rights of LGBTI people that have been occurring for several years in, amongst other countries, Hungary, Poland, the Russian Federation, Turkey and the United Kingdom'.

When The Assembly calls upon all of us to act 'urgently' they are, we think, asking us to do what we do best, to listen, to value belonging and the right to self-determination and to give people a voice.

This special edition is our small step in helping children and young people to speak in a space where practicing psychologists can hear them, and now all we ask you do is listen.  In these uncertain and changing times, we all feel that the papers within this issue offer a challenge to educational psychologists, at the heart of school-based practice, who can potentially make a real difference.

We hope that readers will feel inspired and challenged by the edition, and that it will facilitate and even provoke response within the professional, political and personal spaces that educational and school psychologists inhabit."

Download the latest edition of Educational and Child Psychology