Santa Clara University is a Catholic school, which makes this even more baffling.
The College Fix reports:
Catholic university has psychology students intern at trans clinic for 5-year-oldsA Catholic university in California is facing criticism for its partnership with the County of Santa Clara Behavioral Health Services Gender Affirming Care Clinic, which offers transgender services to children as young as 5 years old.Naomi Best, a former counseling graduate student at Santa Clara University, brought attention to the partnership between the private, Catholic school and the clinic in a post recently on X.“Just confirmed: Santa Clara U trains therapy students to give ‘gender-affirming’ counseling to kids as young as 5 at a state-funded clinic that hands out free binders and does affirming garment fittings with no parent consent required,” Best wrote.“Most 5-year-olds are learning to tie shoes, print letters, and ride a bike without training wheels. This is modern therapy training,” she wrote. Best didn’t respond to The College Fix’s requests for comment.University spokesperson Lisa Robinson confirmed the partnership when contacted by The Fix, but said the county government, not the university, assigns graduate students to positions at the clinic.“The partnership is with the County of Santa Clara Behavioral Health Services Department to provide graduate students with practicum and internship opportunities,” Robinson said in an emailed statement. “It is the agency, not Santa Clara, that is responsible for the placement and assignment of graduate students based on student interests and available agency service areas, which cover a wide range of behavioral health topics.”Robinson did not answer The Fix’s questions about the intended goals of the partnership and the university’s response to the criticism.The university’s School of Education & Counseling Psychology LGBTQ+ Emphasis began its partnership with the Gender Affirming Care Clinic in the fall of 2024, according to a university news release at the time.One of its graduate students became the first to hold a practicum position at the clinic, which the news release described as a “significant step forward for both the highlighting of gender care in graduate counseling psychology education, and the growth of gender care in Santa Clara County.”
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