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Survivor-Led. Ethically Grounded. Safeguarding-Focused.
BeyondTrauma Academy CIC offers specialist consultancy for researchers, organisations, and services working with trauma, abuse, and lived experience. Our role is to support work that is emotionally safer, ethically robust, and grounded in survivor-informed practice — particularly in high-risk or sensitive subject areas such as childhood sexual abuse, domestic abuse, exploitation, and complex trauma.
This service is led by Mayameen Meftahi BEM, survivor, trauma specialist, and founder of BeyondTrauma Academy CIC.
Trauma-focused research and service design carries a high ethical responsibility. Without careful consideration, well-intentioned work can unintentionally:
• Re-traumatise participants • Use unsafe or harmful language • Miss emotional safety risks • Overlook cultural and disclosure-related complexity • Place unrealistic emotional demands on participants • Lack clear safeguarding boundaries
Survivor-led consultancy helps identify these risks early and design safer, more humane approaches.
This consultancy supports professionals to engage with trauma and lived experience in ways that are:
✔ Safer ✔ More reflective ✔ Survivor-informed ✔ Ethically grounded ✔ Boundaried and sustainable
Support can include:
• Review of participant-facing documents (calls, information sheets, consent forms, debriefs) • Trauma-informed language and framing guidance • Emotional safety and pacing considerations • Ethical risk-awareness and blind-spot identification • Survivor-informed safeguarding insight • Methodology reflection from a lived-experience lens • Support with designing optional, non-coercive aftercare pathways • Advisory input into how lived experience is engaged safely
This is not a clinical or therapeutic service. It is advisory, preventative, and ethically focused.
This service is suitable for:
• PhD and postgraduate researchers • Universities and research teams • Community research projects • Police & Criminal Justice System • Charities and CICs • Health, safeguarding, and justice organisations • Policy and evaluation teams • Services engaging people with lived experience
If your work involves sensitive disclosure, trauma narratives, or survivor testimony, this service is likely to be relevant.
All consultancy is:
• Survivor-led • Trauma-informed • Non-clinical • Boundaried • Consent-based • Choice-focused • Dignity-centred
We believe participants are not data sources — they are human beings. Ethical care must extend beyond compliance and into lived reality.
Consultancy is delivered via BeyondTrauma Academy CIC.
This includes: • Meetings (online) • Document review • Written feedback • Reflective advisory input • Ethical and emotional safety considerations
A portion of this rate supports the sustainability of our survivor-led infrastructure and free community resources.
Project-based and light-touch monthly arrangements can be discussed.
This service provides:
✔ Advisory input ✔ Reflective guidance ✔ Ethical and safeguarding insight ✔ Risk-awareness ✔ Survivor-informed perspective
✘ Therapy ✘ Crisis support ✘ Participant counselling ✘ Emotional aftercare ✘ Clinical intervention
Why Survivor-Led Ethical Consultancy Matters
Research and service design involving trauma, abuse, and lived experience carries a high ethical responsibility. Without specialist input, well-intentioned projects can unintentionally cause harm, re-traumatise participants, or replicate the very dynamics they aim to challenge.
