Meet Carrie: curious about people, systems & connection
Carrie Wilson is a trauma-informed social policy researcher, consultant, trainer, speaker and Certified Forest Bathing Guide, bringing together research-based knowledge, professional expertise and lived experience to understand people, the systems around them and what might need to change.
BA (Hons) International Relations | MA (Merit) Childhood, Youth and Social Policy | PhD Social Policy researcher
15+ years of people, systems & connection
Carrie has spent more than 15 years working across social care, education, research, policy and lived experience leadership, locally, nationally and internationally.
Her work particularly focuses on care experience, financial need and transitions to adulthood; trauma-informed research and practice; care experience and estrangement in education; participation and co-production; and lived experience leadership.
Carrie has presented evidence at the European Parliament, collaborated with care-experienced young people across seven European countries, contributed specialist expertise to university research partnerships, developed and delivered trauma-informed research and learning programmes, and delivered keynotes across the UK, Europe, Australia and the United States.
She has contributed to research, policy and practice at local, national and international levels and has appeared on BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio and other national media, bringing research evidence and lived experience into wider conversations about care experience, financial need and the systems surrounding people’s lives.
Her doctoral research in Social Policy examines the financial needs and experiences of care-experienced people during the transition to adulthood, bringing together participatory research, lived experience and quantitative and qualitative evidence to consider what people actually need to have the opportunity to live well.
My Approach
I want to ensure you are being provided with the most rigorous and relevant information, training, and support, which is why I have invested in my training to become CPD Certified by the CPD Standards Office.
My work is grounded in trauma-informed, poverty-informed and capability-based approaches, with a strong focus on connection, participation and creating spaces in which people feel safe enough to engage in ways that work for them.
I am interested not only in people’s experiences, but in the environments, relationships and systems that shape them. This means looking beyond individual circumstances to consider poverty, inequality, access to resources, institutional structures and power.
This is particularly important within trauma-informed work. Trauma matters, but it cannot explain everything. People’s opportunities are also shaped by whether they have enough money, somewhere safe and stable to live, supportive relationships, access to resources and genuine opportunities to exercise choice and agency.
I believe lived experience should be valued as expertise, not simply invited into spaces created by others. Meaningful participation requires attention to whose knowledge is valued, who holds decision-making power and whether people can genuinely influence what happens next.
Connection is another thread running through my work — connection with ourselves, with other people, with the environments around us and with the systems and communities of which we are part.
More recently, this has led me to train as a Certified Forest Bathing Guide and develop a nature-connection strand alongside my research and consultancy practice. Through this work, I create intentional spaces where people can slow down, step away from everyday demands and reconnect with themselves, others and the natural world.
Although Forest Bathing and social policy research may initially appear very different, the principles connecting them are familiar: safety, connection, agency, environment and the conditions people need to thrive.
Whether I am undertaking research, supporting a research team, delivering training, facilitating participation, working with an organisation on practice and systems change, or guiding people through nature, I am interested in creating the conditions for people to participate meaningfully and for learning to lead somewhere.
At the heart of my work is an understanding that people do not exist separately from the conditions around them. If we want people to thrive, we need to understand those conditions — and sometimes be willing to change them.
Areas Of Expertise
Care Experience, Financial Need & Transitions to Adulthood
Research, policy and practice relating to the financial realities of leaving care and the resources required to participate in adulthood.
Care Experience, Estrangement & Belonging
Understanding relationships, connection, family resources and what belonging means beyond formal definitions of support.
Care Experience & Estrangement in Education
Supporting education providers to understand and respond to the experiences of care-experienced and estranged learners.
Trauma-Informed Research, Policy & Practice
Applying trauma-informed principles beyond frontline practice to research methods, organisational approaches, policy and systems.
Lived Experience Leadership (LEX)
Supporting organisations to move beyond consultation towards meaningful influence, shared decision-making and leadership.
Participation & Co-Production
Designing approaches that consider power, accessibility, safety and whose knowledge influences what happens next.
Participatory & Lived Experience Research
Designing and undertaking research with, rather than simply about, people with lived experience.
Forest Bathing, Nature Connection & Wellbeing
Creating guided opportunities for individuals, groups and organisations to slow down, connect and experience the natural world differently.
Why This Work Matters To Me
My interest in these areas of work isn’t only academic or professional.
I bring my own lived experience of care and navigating the systems surrounding it, alongside more than 15 years of professional experience working with care-experienced people, organisations, practitioners, policymakers and researchers.
Those different perspectives have shaped the questions I ask, and how I understand the systems.
I know that what a system says it provides and how that system is experienced by the person living within it can be very different things. I am interested in that space between policy, practice and lived reality — and in what becomes visible when we genuinely listen to people rather than assuming we already understand what they need.
That is also why I am willing to ask questions that can sometimes feel uncomfortable: Who holds the power here? Whose knowledge are we valuing? What assumptions are we making? Are we asking people to become more resilient within conditions that actually need to change?
For me, lived experience isn’t something to add to a biography or invite into a room once the important decisions have already been made. It is a form of knowledge that can sit alongside research evidence and professional expertise — sometimes confirming what we think we know, and sometimes asking us to look again.
Ways We Can Work Together
From research and evaluation to training, learning and nature connection, explore the different ways we can work together to create meaningful change.
“From lived experience leadership and participatory research to international policy, training, facilitation and speaking , my work has always centred around people, the systems surrounding them, and what we can learn when we genuinely bring different forms of knowledge together.”