At this year’s Safer Communities Conference, we shone a spotlight on our 2025 Wales Safer Communities Awards overall winners. One of the winners was Action for Children. Below we dig into their work in Wales and find out how they’re supporting young people at risk of and how have been criminally exploited and trafficked.
Action for Children is one of the UK’s leading children’s charities, with a long history of supporting vulnerable children, young people and families to build safer, more stable lives. Founded in 1869 by Thomas Bowman Stephenson as the National Children’s Home, the organisation has spent more than 150 years adapting to meet changing social needs while remaining committed to a simple but powerful mission: to protect and support children facing disadvantage, neglect or crisis. Today, Action for Children delivers a broad range of services across the UK, including residential care, fostering and adoption, family support, mental health services, and targeted interventions for young people at risk of harm.
In Wales, Action for Children is a significant provider of children’s services, with a strong and growing presence across the country. Its work includes children’s homes, family support programmes, young carers services, and projects designed to strengthen emotional wellbeing and resilience. The organisation works closely with Welsh local authorities and Welsh Government on priorities including early intervention, prevention, and trauma-informed practice. It is committed to ensuring children can remain safely within their families where possible, while also providing high-quality care where it is not.
A defining feature of Action for Children’s work in Wales is its emphasis on relationship-based practice. Staff are trained to build consistent, trusting relationships with children and families, recognising that these connections are often the foundation for long-term change. This approach is particularly important for children who have experienced trauma, instability or neglect. Across its Welsh services, the charity also reflects a commitment to culturally sensitive delivery, including the use of the Welsh language and a strong focus on embedding services within local communities.
In recent years, one of the most urgent challenges facing children across the UK—and increasingly in Wales—has been criminal exploitation. This includes county lines activity, where organised criminal groups groom and exploit children to transport and sell drugs, as well as other forms of coercion, manipulation and abuse. Children who are criminally exploited are often among the most vulnerable, frequently affected by poverty, family breakdown, exclusion from education, or time in care. Exploiters prey on these vulnerabilities, offering a false sense of belonging or financial reward before trapping young people in cycles of abuse and control.
Action for Children has developed specialist responses to this issue, including dedicated services focused on identifying, supporting and safeguarding children at risk of exploitation. These services work on multiple levels: intervening early where risks are emerging, supporting young people currently being exploited, and helping those who have been exploited to recover and rebuild their lives. Practitioners work closely with partners such as police, social services, schools and youth justice teams to ensure a coordinated response, while also building direct, trusted relationships with young people themselves.
In Wales, this work is particularly important in areas where children may be targeted by exploitation linked to wider criminal networks. Flintshire is one such area where Action for Children has been delivering impactful work to tackle child criminal exploitation. At the centre of this work is Libby Webb and her team, whose dedication and expertise have helped shape a highly effective, locally responsive service. Their work exemplifies what can be achieved when strong partnerships, specialist knowledge and a child-centred approach come together.
Libby Webb’s team works intensively with children identified as being at risk of exploitation, offering one-to-one support, mentoring and practical interventions. They help young people disengage from harmful relationships, re-engage with education or training, and develop the confidence and resilience needed to build safer futures. Their approach is rooted in consistency and trust—often providing the first stable, reliable relationship a young person has experienced. Alongside this direct work, the team collaborates closely with local authorities, North Wales Police, schools and other agencies to share intelligence, raise awareness and strengthen safeguarding responses.
Prevention is also a key element of the Flintshire model. The team delivers awareness sessions in schools and communities, helping young people understand the realities of exploitation and recognise warning signs. They also support parents, carers and professionals to identify risks early and respond appropriately. This proactive approach helps reduce the number of children drawn into exploitation in the first place, complementing the intensive support offered to those already affected.
The impact of this work has been widely recognised. Libby Webb and her team have received awards acknowledging their innovation and effectiveness in tackling child criminal exploitation. These accolades not only reflect the difference they are making locally, but also highlight the importance of investing in specialist services that put children’s safety and wellbeing at the centre.
The reality of this work is brought into sharp focus by the experiences of young people like BK. His story illustrates how vulnerability and exploitation can develop when systems fail to respond effectively. From the age of two, BK experienced instability, moving in and out of care and across different parts of the country without any consistent support. He was excluded from multiple schools and received no education from the age of 12. Despite clear signs of neurodiversity, he was never assessed or diagnosed. Instead, he was labelled as “challenging”—a description that masked his unmet needs and left him without the help he desperately required.
At home, BK lived with parental substance misuse and domestic violence, while in his community he became associated with antisocial behaviour and known to local agencies as a problem. Beneath this, however, was a child seeking belonging, safety and acceptance. These unmet emotional needs made him an easy target for exploitation. Older peers gradually drew him into a gang network, offering the sense of identity and connection he had been missing. Without a meaningful safeguarding response or trusted adults in his life, criminal exploitation became, in his eyes, a place where he was valued.
As the risks escalated, BK witnessed serious violence yet continued to be viewed primarily through a lens of offending rather than vulnerability. It was only when he was referred to the Criminal Exploitation Support Service that a different picture began to emerge. He engaged immediately, attending every session and meeting every milestone. For the first time, professionals saw his motivation and potential. Through consistent support, he began to believe that his future could be different.
However, his exploitation deepened when he was trafficked out of area to run drugs to repay a debt. He went missing for over 24 hours before being noticed, despite being in a 24/7 staffed placement. When his room was eventually checked, a machete and multiple burner phones were found—clear indicators of the level of risk he faced. Even when he reached out to his mother in distress, the response from agencies was hesitant, with doubts raised rather than urgent safeguarding action taken.
After nearly a week, BK managed to contact his worker from the Criminal Exploitation Support Service, who travelled to bring him home. Yet instead of being protected as a victim of trafficking, he was arrested for breaching bail conditions linked to the very location he had been exploited from. Despite a positive National Referral Mechanism decision confirming his status as a victim, and detailed professional evidence outlining his progress, he was remanded in custody. The decision was made without him present in court, underscoring the systemic failures that continue to affect exploited children.
BK’s story is not unique. Across the UK, thousands of children face similar experiences of exploitation, coercion and violence, often compounded by poverty and prior failures in care and support systems. Too often, these children are criminalised rather than protected, with their experiences misunderstood or overlooked. His case highlights why specialist services like those delivered by Action for Children are essential—not only to support individual young people, but to challenge the systems that fail them.
Ultimately, the work of Libby Webb and her team in Flintshire demonstrates the difference that dedicated, relationship-based and trauma-informed support can make. By recognising children as victims, building trust, and advocating for change, they are helping to transform lives and improve responses to criminal exploitation. Their award-winning work stands as a powerful example of what is possible when children are truly seen, heard and supported—and why continued investment in these services remains so important.
