Training, Keynotes & Learning
Learning that brings together research, lived experience and practice
I design and deliver training, keynotes, workshops and learning programmes for organisations, research teams, universities and professionals working across social care, education, research and related sectors.
My learning brings together research-based knowledge, lived experience and professional expertise, making complex ideas accessible while creating space to question assumptions, reflect on practice and consider what might need to change.
I don’t believe meaningful learning comes from simply giving people more information. Good learning creates opportunities to think, question, connect evidence with experience and consider what that means for what happens next.
Sessions can be commissioned from my existing areas of learning or developed bespoke around your organisation, research project, workforce or intended outcomes.
What Learning With Me Looks Like
My approach to training isn’t about standing at the front of a room and delivering information at people.
Learning with me is evidence-informed, participatory and reflective.
I use research alongside lived and professional experience to help people connect evidence with the realities of practice. Depending on the subject and group, sessions may include discussion, reflection, case examples, creative activities, participatory exercises and opportunities to apply learning directly to participants’ own roles and organisations.
Trauma-informed principles also shape how I facilitate learning, not simply what I teach about. This means considering safety, accessibility, choice, relationships and different ways of participating. I am comfortable asking — and holding space for — questions that can sometimes feel uncomfortable, particularly around power, inequality, organisational practice and whose knowledge we value. The aim isn’t for everyone to leave agreeing with everything that has been said.
It is for people to leave thinking differently, understanding more and able to do something with what they have learned.
Experience
Learning developed through practice, research and lived experience
My training and speaking work has developed through more than 15 years working across social care, research, education, policy and lived experience leadership, in the UK and internationally.
During this time, I have designed and delivered bespoke training for professionals, research teams and peer and lived-experience researchers, developed learning packages for national and international use, and created participatory and reflective programmes that translate research and lived experience into practice.
My experience also includes delivering university and research seminars, professional learning across social care and education, and national and international conference presentations and keynotes. Across these different spaces, my focus remains on making complex knowledge accessible, creating meaningful opportunities for reflection and helping people connect learning with what they do next.
Training & Professional Learning
My training ranges from focused workshops and facilitated learning sessions to longer programmes and bespoke packages.
While each session is adapted to its audience and context, my core areas of learning include:
Care Experience & Transitions to Adulthood
Understanding what transition from care actually involves, including financial need, relationships, housing, education, stability and the resources and support that are often provided by families during emerging adulthood.
Financial Need, Family Privilege & Care Experience
Drawing directly on my doctoral research to explore what it actually costs to transition into adulthood, the financial experiences of care-experienced people, and what becomes visible when we consider the resources and support available within families.
Trauma-Informed Practice
Moving beyond simply understanding trauma to consider what trauma-informed principles mean for relationships, environments, language, organisational processes and everyday professional practice.
Trauma-Informed Research & Evaluation
Applying trauma-informed principles throughout the research lifecycle — from design and recruitment to participation, data collection, researcher wellbeing, analysis, dissemination and what happens after research ends.
Lived Experience Leadership, Participation & Co-production
Exploring power, participation and whose knowledge is valued, and considering what needs to be in place if people with lived experience are to meaningfully influence decisions rather than simply be invited to contribute.
Peer & Lived Experience Researcher Development
Training and development for peer and lived-experience researchers, alongside learning for the research teams working with them.
This can include research skills, trauma-informed approaches, boundaries and wellbeing, qualitative methods, analysis, meaningful involvement and navigating academic research environments.
Care Experience & Estrangement in Education
Supporting universities, colleges and other education providers to better understand care experience and estrangement, including belonging, financial inequality, access to resources and the barriers students may encounter throughout education.
Creative & Participatory Research Methods
Supporting researchers and organisations to move beyond conventional methods and develop creative, accessible and meaningful ways for people to contribute knowledge.
On Demand Learning
On-Demand Learning — Coming Soon for individual and organisational access.
I understand that attending training at a fixed time isn’t always possible. Workloads, caring responsibilities, different working patterns and accessibility needs can all affect when and how people are able to access professional learning. A range of on-demand training is coming soon, giving individuals and organisations greater flexibility to access learning at a time and pace that works for them.
Courses will include Trauma-Informed Essentials, alongside learning in:
Trauma-Informed Communication • Trauma-Informed Record Keeping • Trauma-Informed Peer Support • Trauma-Informed Reflective Practice • Participation & Co-Production • Belonging & Inclusion • Vicarious Trauma • Mental Health • Safeguarding
The learning combines accessible, evidence-informed content with opportunities to reflect on what this means for real-world practice, rather than simply working through information.
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Bespoke Learning & Development
Sometimes the learning you need doesn’t already have a course title.
Sometimes the learning you need doesn’t already have a course title.
I develop bespoke training, workshops and learning programmes around the needs of organisations, teams and research projects. Rather than adapting your needs to fit an existing package, we start with what you are trying to understand, develop or change and design the learning around that.
This might involve an initial learning-needs conversation, bespoke session or programme design, tailored resources, individual workshops or multi-session programmes, and facilitated reflective or follow-up learning. I also develop specialist learning for research teams, peer and lived-experience researchers, social care and education professionals, particularly around trauma-informed and participatory practice.
Keynotes & Speaking
Research, experience and ideas that create conversations
I speak at conferences, organisational events, universities, seminars and professional learning events in the UK and internationally.
Over the past 15 years, I have spoken about care experience, social care, lived experience, participation, trauma, transitions to adulthood and systems change across the UK, Europe, Australia and the United States, as well as contributing to national media conversations.
My speaking brings together research evidence, lived experience and professional knowledge. I am particularly interested in the questions underneath the evidence: what are we assuming, whose perspective might be missing, what conditions are shaping the outcomes we see, and what might we need to do differently?
Keynotes can be developed around the theme of your event or draw on my specialist areas.
Speaking topics can include:
Care Experience & Transitions to Adulthood
What happens when we expect independence without the resources and relationships that usually make independence possible?
The Financial Needs of Care-Experienced People
What does it actually cost to transition from care into adulthood — and what does research tell us about the gap between available support and need?
Family Privilege & the Transition to Adulthood
Exploring the often-invisible financial, practical and relational resources families provide during emerging adulthood, and what happens when these cannot be assumed.
Trauma-Informed Systems & Practice
Moving trauma-informed thinking beyond individual interactions to consider environments, organisations, policies, power and systems.
Lived Experience, Power & Participation
What does it mean to genuinely value lived experience as knowledge — and what needs to change when participation redistributes rather than simply consults around power?
Researching Differently
Participatory, lived-experience and trauma-informed approaches to research, including what happens when we reconsider who creates knowledge and how.
Care Experience, Estrangement & Belonging in Education
Understanding the structural, relational and financial conditions surrounding participation and belonging within further and higher education.
I am also happy to develop a bespoke keynote or contribution around the theme of your event.
Previous & Current Bespoke Work
I work across academic, voluntary-sector and lived experience research partnerships, contributing expertise in trauma-informed and participatory research, care experience, co-production and the meaningful involvement of people with lived experience throughout the research process.
My role varies between projects — from research design, training and methodological support to co-analysis, facilitation, knowledge exchange and contributing specialist subject and lived experience expertise.
RESPOND | NIHR
Supporting better interventions for care-experienced people during early parenthood
RESPOND is an NIHR-funded research programme focused on interventions and support for care-experienced people during early parenthood, exploring how support can better respond to the experiences and needs of care-experienced parents.
My role focuses on strengthening the trauma-informed and lived experience dimensions of the research, working with both the wider research team and peer researchers involved in the project.
As part of this work, I am developing a bespoke training package for RESPOND, bringing together trauma-informed research practice and peer researcher skills. The training is designed around the specific needs of the project rather than applying a generic trauma-informed model, supporting researchers to translate principles such as safety, choice, agency, trust and collaboration into the practical realities of undertaking sensitive research.
Alongside training development and delivery, I provide ongoing support to peer researchers and contribute to co-analysis and dissemination, helping to ensure lived experience knowledge remains part of how evidence is interpreted and communicated.
This work considers the wellbeing and experience of researchers as well as research participants, recognising that peer and lived-experience researchers may be working with material that intersects with their own experiences.
My contribution: Bespoke research training design & delivery | Trauma-informed research | Peer researcher skills development & support | Lived experience research | Co-analysis | Dissemination
NEST | NIHR
Developing trauma-informed frameworks for residential children’s homes
NEST is exploring the development and use of trauma-informed frameworks within residential children’s homes, contributing to understanding how trauma-informed approaches can be embedded within the environments, relationships and systems surrounding children and young people in residential care.
My role is focused on supporting the project’s Lived Experience Board to understand, engage with and meaningfully contribute to the research.
This includes facilitating discussions, making research processes and materials accessible, supporting members to contribute their knowledge and perspectives, and helping to bridge the space between academic research and lived experience.
Importantly, the role is not simply about enabling people to attend or provide feedback. It is about considering how lived experience knowledge can genuinely influence the research, including attention to accessibility, relationships, power, safety and how contributors can see what happens as a result of their involvement.
My contribution: Lived Experience Board support | Facilitation | Research accessibility | Participation & co-production | Trauma-informed approaches | Lived experience research
Doctoral Research
Understanding what care-experienced people need to have the opportunity to live well in adulthood
My doctoral research in Social Policy examines the financial needs of care-experienced people during the transition to adulthood, moving beyond what support is currently provided to ask what resources people actually need to participate in society and have the opportunity to live well.
The research combines participatory qualitative research, quantitative analysis and the Minimum Income Standard methodology, working with care-experienced people to understand how financial need differs across pathways into adulthood.
The research has included the development of a Minimum Income Standard for care-experienced people, alongside work examining family resources, financial support, stability and different experiences of transition from care.
Methods & expertise: Participatory research | Minimum Income Standard | Deliberative methods | Focus groups & interviews | Quantitative analysis | Co-production | Social policy | Financial need & care experience
Upcoming Training & Events
Products by Category
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Beyond Awareness: Supporting Care-Experienced People in Practice: Care Experienced Month
£75.00 -
Building Financial Support Services for Estranged and Care Experienced Students. Next Open Booking Date September 22nd 2026
£55.00 -
Care Experience and Estrangement as an EDI Issue
£75.00 -
Care-Experienced People Minimum Income Standard (CEP MIS) and the Transition to Adulthood Date
£95.00 -
From Lived Experience to Leadership: National Care Experienced People Month Tuesday 24th November
From: £0.00 -
Lived Experience Leadership (LEX): Beyond Consultation and Into Influence : Care Experienced People Month
£100.00 -
Research With Us, Not On Us : National Care Experienced People Month 10th November 2026
From: £0.00 -
Supporting Care-Experienced and Estranged Learners Date: 21st September 2026 Time: 09:30am–12:30pm
£75.00 -
Tell Your Story? Maybe Not. : National Care Experienced People Month 3rd November 2026
From: £0.00
Let’s Create the Right Learning for Your People
You don’t need to know exactly what the training should look like before getting in touch.
If you have an issue your team is grappling with, an event you are planning, a research team that needs support, or an area of practice you want people to think differently about, we can start there.
I can deliver existing learning, adapt a session to your context or develop something completely bespoke.
Testimonials
Lacy Dicharry ABD, MS, MS, MBA, SHRM-SCP : Director of the Lousiana State University Leadership Development Institute.
“Carrie’s facilitation skills brought a transformative experience to Club Café. Her gentle, engaging approach allowed youth to feel safe and curious as they explored self-awareness and emotional wellness. Her impact was undeniable – participants connected deeply with the material, empowered to use these insights and tools long after the workshop ended.”
Kayinde, Training Attendee
“Carrie created such a welcoming and reflective space. You communicated everything clearly and compassionately, and whenever I was unsure about anything, you was more than happy to revisit and explain it further. That level of patience and care made a real difference to my learning experience.
I feel honoured to have been part of this course and deeply appreciative of the learning environment that was created. Thank you for such a meaningful and impactful experience.”