Episode 4 - Trauma-Informed Storytelling & Keeping Lived Experience at the Centre with Sophia Alexandra Hall
Care-Experienced People Mini-Series
About the Series
The Care-Experienced People Mini-Series is part of Trauma-Informed Conversations - a podcast created by Trauma-Informed Consultancy Services (TICS) to explore what it really means to build systems and relationships grounded in care, connection, and humanity.
Hosted by Carrie Wilson, this special series invites care-experienced people, researchers, and practitioners from around the world to lead open, relational conversations about trauma, healing, and change - asking what it looks like when we do it together.
Each episode brings lived experience and professional insight into dialogue, offering space for reflection, courage, and system learning.
Series Theme
Exploring trauma and healing both within the care system and the spaces that surround it - led by care-experienced voices, grounded in reflection, connection, and change.
Episode Description
In this episode of Trauma Informed Conversations, Carrie sits down with journalist, Churchill Fellow, and TEDx speaker Sophia Alexandra Hall to explore what it really means to tell stories with care-experienced people, not about them.
Drawing on her own journey from care into journalism, Sophia names the three “boxes” under-represented communities are so often squeezed into by the media – tragic victim, dangerous threat, or inspirational exception – and why this narrow lens can be both dehumanising and re-traumatising.
Sophia shares how being on both sides of the table – as a care-experienced interviewee and now as Deputy Digital Editor at The Big Issue – led her to develop a trauma-informed storytelling toolkit for journalists and for people with lived experience. Together, Carrie and Sophia explore what safer, more collaborative storytelling could look like across journalism, research, education, and practice.
This conversation is part of our special mini-series on trauma and healing in and around the care system, led by care-experienced people and focused on what change and collective healing can look like when we do it together.
In this Episode, we Explore:
- How Sophia “fell into” journalism via campaigning against SI 445 and realised that breaking complex information down for the community is
- What it felt like growing up seeing headlines like “only 6% of care leavers go to university” – and how statistics like this can limit, not liberate, people.
- The three media boxes under-represented communities are often placed in: tragic victim, dangerous threat, and inspirational exception.
- Sophia’s Churchill Fellowship in the US: meeting care-experienced people in LA, visiting the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, and learning from trauma specialists.
- The concept of a “disempowered interviewee” and how power and choice can be quietly taken away in interviews and storytelling.
- Practical trauma-informed interviewing practices:
- Why people with lived experience don’t owe anyone their story, and how to decide if, when, and how to share.
- How journalists, researchers and practitioners can move towards collaborative, co-created storytelling – including commissioning op-eds and following lived-experience voices online.
- A note of hope: the power of the online care-experienced community, and the role we can all play in amplifying stories told in people’s own.
Guests
Sophia Alexandra Hall is a care-experienced journalist and Deputy Digital Editor at The Big Issue. She is a regular paper reviewer for Sky News, a graduate of the University of Oxford, a TEDx speaker, and a Churchill Fellow, where she focused on trauma-informed storytelling and journalism.
Sophia uses her platform to challenge harmful media narratives about care-experienced people and other under-represented communities, and to champion safer, more ethical ways of telling stories rooted in dignity, consent, and collaboration.
You can usually find her online as @SophiasSocials.
Host
Carrie Wilson - Collaboration & Innovation Lead at TICS, and well as a care-experienced researcher and practitioner whose work focuses on building trauma-informed systems rooted in care, connection, and humanity. Carrie’s work sits where practice, research, and lived experience meet, creating spaces for honest reflection on how we understand trauma and build systems that can truly heal.
Content Note
This episode includes discussion of childhood trauma, care experience, media portrayals, and re-traumatisation in interviews. Please listen in a way that feels safe for you, and pause if you need to.
Connect with Sophia & Resources Mentioned
Learn More with TICS
This conversation sits at the heart of the work we do at Trauma Informed Consultancy Services (TICS) – supporting organisations, teams, and communities to move from trauma-aware to trauma-responsive practice.
If this episode has sparked ideas or questions for you, you might be especially interested in:
- Trauma-Informed Research with Care-Experienced People – for researchers, practitioners and organisations who want to design research and consultation that is ethical, collaborative, and grounded in care.
- Trauma-Informed Record Keeping exploring how the words we use (in records, reports, media, and everyday practice) can either retraumatise or support healing.
- Bespoke consultancy and facilitation – supporting teams to embed trauma-informed principles into strategy, participation, and lived-experience involvement.
You can find out more about our upcoming training and bespoke support at ticservicesltd.com, or get in touch with us directly to explore a tailored package lyndsay@ticservicesltd.com
