Catholic university has psychology students intern at trans clinic for 5-year-olds

A 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.”

The clinic, which is run by the county government, “provides outpatient behavioral health services to transgender and gender diverse (TGD) children, youth, and adults” starting at age 5, according to its website.

Among other things, the clinic provides therapy and “peer support,” as well as connections to “gender affirming medical interventions, including writing letters of support for clients registered in the clinic.”

When asked about the partnership, a pediatric medical leader spoke with concern about the growth of transgender clinics and their impact on young children. 

Dr. Mike Artigues, the president of the American College of Pediatricians, told The College Fix that so-called “gender affirming care” actually consists of “social, chemical, and surgical interventions that affirm a delusion and irreversibly harms the child.”

“As a pediatric advocacy group, we would be concerned about any clinic that practices or endorses such interventions for any minor,” he said in an interview last week.

“Colleges, universities and medical schools form the minds of the future in both medicine and society in general. What is taught there is assumed to be evidence-based and without controversy. This is certainly not the case with what is considered the ‘standard of care’ for the treatment of children with gender dysphoria,” Artigues said. 

“While our concern is with pediatric patients, these children grow into adults and any problems incurred as a result of interventions as a child can plague these patients the rest of their lives. Such is definitely the case with the use of puberty blockers, opposite sex hormones and sterilizing surgical procedures.” he told The Fix.

A Catholic advocacy group leader also expressed disapproval of the university’s partnership with the clinic. 

“As a Catholic university, Santa Clara should be affirming the self-evident truth revealed in Genesis: God created us male and female. Any attempt to endorse the falsehoods of transgender ideology is a direct affront to our divine Creator,” John Ritchie, director of TFP Student Action, told The College Fix in an email Tuesday.

TFP Student Action is a nationwide network of college students who promote traditional moral values, with a specific focus on college campuses. TFP stands for Tradition, Family and Property. 

“Gender ideology is unnatural, immoral, and irrational. It is troubling enough when secular clinics exploit children’s innocence under the guise of ‘gender-affirming care.’ But it’s even more grievous when institutions that claim to be Catholic participate in leading souls into such confusion and harm,” Ritchie said. 

The Fix also contacted the Catholic Diocese of San Jose, where the university is located, to inquire about the partnership, but received no response.

The Catholic Church catechism teaches, “By creating the human being man and woman, God gives personal dignity equally to the one and the other. Each of them, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity.”