Abstract This exposition explores the methodological processes of a creative research project concerned with representing the complexities of adoptive families in crisis with a wider backdrop of a crisis in care in the UK. Within this context, the domestic ‘private’ stresses faced everyday by families with lived experiences of trauma can be hidden and unsupported with devastating consequences. Yet understandings of families’ needs with care experienced young people at their heart is limited, with parents being failed or blamed if breakdown occurs.

Holes in Care seeks to expand and develop more diverse and complex representations of family life amid crisis that centres a more trauma-informed approach including one that is attuned to systemic trauma. Art practice research is particularly well placed to presence these informally recognised but institutionally marginalised narratives in its ability to embrace complexity through the urgent need to tell stories differently, including when there are too many words or none that are meaningful.

Through an exploration of wood, a signifier of strength, support and nature but with circling narratives of climate collapse, a material vocabulary is being developed that can express ambivalence, overwhelm, trauma and unspeakability within the context of failing care systems for care experienced young people and their families. Family Life (2025 ongoing) is discussed as a creative example of how non-hegemonic knowledges of families in crisis are visualised, in this instance feelings of overwhelm through systemic trauma.