Designing for reality
This isn't about being nicer to vulnerable people. It's about designing systems that work for people as they actually are.
Trauma-Informed Content Consulting is run by Adrie van der Luijt, who spent years working on government digital projects as a Senior Content Designer and Content Strategist and watching how systems fail people during the worst moments of their lives.
This work combines a Wall Street Journal-quoted background in business journalism with hard-won understanding of what happens when you’re the person on the other side of a form that demands clarity you don’t currently have.
The focus is on making powerful institutions accountable for the harm their content creates, working with vulnerability teams who need to understand regulatory risk and content teams who need to fix what’s not working.
trauma-informed
Driven by innovation
Why this matters now
UK financial services firms have been fined £174 million in a single year recently, largely for failures in dealing with vulnerable customers. Regulatory frameworks like FCA Consumer Duty are forcing organisations to prove they’re not harming vulnerable customers, but most don’t know where to start.
Their systems were designed for people at full capacity who never make mistakes, never get confused, and never have a bad day. That was never realistic, but the gap between design assumptions and lived reality has become impossible to ignore.
Research shows that most people now experience periods of reduced capacity regardless of circumstances. People are less patient, less able to focus, and more self-focused than they were before 2020. This means digital services designed as minimal viable products based on pre-2020 user research may no longer make sense to a majority of users.
Trauma-informed content design isn’t about creating separate “vulnerable customer” pathways or watering down content. It’s about front-loading critical information, using progressive disclosure, avoiding assumptions about stable user states and giving people genuine control over next steps.
The approach draws from multiple frameworks including FCA Consumer Duty guidelines, GDS/GOV.UK standards and WCAG 2.2 AA standards. It recognises that vulnerability is about moments, not categories of people.
A crucial distinction exists between process compliance (following requirements) and outcome accountability (being personally answerable for whether content works for vulnerable users).
Real accountability means sitting with uncertainty rather than defaulting to procedure.
UK organisations where vulnerability and compliance intersect
Where we work
We work with UK organisations in government, financial services and health sectors where regulatory frameworks and vulnerability guidance create specific compliance requirements. This focus enables deep expertise in FCA Consumer Duty, vulnerable customer guidance, GDS standards, NHS content standards and charity-sector compliance.
Projects have included work with Cancer Research UK (4 million monthly users), Department for Work and Pensions (Universal Credit, 5.6 million claimants), Cabinet Office (COVID-19 emergency grant schemes) and Metropolitan Police Service (national drink spiking advice service now used by 81% of UK forces).
Current work includes a keynote on trauma-informed content design at Growing in Content 2026. If you would to establish a partnership to pilot trauma-informed frameworks in high-stakes citizen-facing services, get in touch.
Growing in Content 2026
CONSULTING