Home – Consultancy
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.
PROFESSIONAL TRAINING
ACCPH Accredited • 6 CPD Points
A practical and engaging exploration of trauma, its impact on the brain, body and behaviour, and how professionals can create safer, more effective and compassionate environments for people affected by adversity and trauma.
Delivered by Mayameen Meftahi BEM, Founder and Lead Trauma Specialist at BeyondTrauma Academy CIC and creator of the award-winning BeyondTrauma™ Recovery Programme, this training brings together professional knowledge, lived experience and survivor-informed insight to provide a deeper understanding of trauma and recovery.
Combining lived experience with professional practice, Mayameen offers insight into the realities of trauma, the responses that can sit beneath behaviour and the practical approaches that can support people more effectively.
This training moves beyond theory, helping professionals understand the real-life impact of trauma and how to embed trauma-informed principles into everyday practice.
Understanding Trauma
Develop a clearer understanding of trauma, adversity and the ways traumatic experiences can continue to influence thoughts, emotions, behaviour, relationships and everyday functioning.
The Brain, Body & Survival Response
Explore what happens when the brain and body perceive threat, including the role of adrenaline and survival responses, and why these responses can continue even when immediate danger has passed.
Triggers & Trauma Responses
Understand how obvious and less obvious triggers can activate trauma responses and how these may present through anxiety, avoidance, anger, withdrawal, emotional numbing or other behaviours.
Looking Beneath Behaviour
Explore how behaviours that can appear challenging, disengaged or difficult may make greater sense when viewed through a trauma-informed lens — helping professionals move away from judgement and towards understanding.
Trauma-Informed Communication
Consider the impact of language, professional interactions, trust, choice, boundaries and communication on someone who has experienced trauma.
Creating Safer Professional Practice
Explore practical ways professionals and organisations can reduce the risk of further distress, promote emotional and psychological safety and embed trauma-informed principles into everyday interactions and environments.
From Understanding To Application
Apply the learning to real-world professional practice and consider what can be done differently within your own role, team or organisation.
This training is suitable for professionals and teams working with children, young people or adults who may have experienced trauma, adversity, abuse or violence.
It can support work across:
Education • Health & Social Care • Criminal Justice • VAWG & Survivor Services • Community & Voluntary Organisations • Frontline & Support Services
No previous specialist trauma training is required.
3 Hours • Half Day • Full Day
Training can be commissioned for organisations and professional teams through live online or face-to-face delivery.
Longer formats provide additional space for discussion, reflection, practical application and exploration of trauma-informed practice within the organisation’s own setting.
ACCPH Accredited • 6 CPD Points
Participants completing the accredited training receive certification recognising their continuing professional development.
Give your team the knowledge and practical understanding to look beyond behaviour, recognise trauma responses and respond with greater awareness, compassion and confidence.
