Our colleague Junior Smart joined the Youth Innovation Conference 2026, hosted at the University of Derby, to speak about youth safety, exploitation and early intervention. Here he reflects on some of the key themes from his contribution.
We did not come into youth work, policing, health or safeguarding simply to manage systems or tick boxes. People enter these professions because they want children, families and communities to be safer and better supported. However, the world children are growing up in is changing quickly, and the issues affecting them are becoming increasingly complex. Online harms, extreme misogyny, exploitation, violence and mental health pressures are now part of the landscape many young people are trying to make sense of, often while the adults and systems around them are still trying to catch up.
This is particularly visible when we look at violence, gangs and criminal exploitation. There may be very real victims, very real harm and devastating consequences for families and communities. At the same time, the young person causing that harm may themselves be experiencing coercion, fear, trauma, pressure or exploitation. Those two realities are not mutually exclusive. A child can cause harm and still be a child in need of protection, and good practice has to be capable of holding accountability and safeguarding at the same time.
If we want to reduce violence and exploitation, we therefore need to shift some of our focus away from responding only when harm has already happened. When an incident occurs, we should still be prepared to ask whether there were earlier signs of vulnerability, coercion or escalating risk that could have prompted a different response. Early intervention is not simply about identifying risk sooner; it is about what we do once we recognise it.
That response cannot be reduced to monitoring, labels or professional assumptions. It requires care, curiosity, practical help and, above all, trusted relationships. Young people experiencing exploitation are often described as non-compliant, disengaged or difficult to reach. Yet sometimes the better question is not why the young person will not engage with us, but whether we have done enough to become someone they can trust and engage with.
Those who groom and exploit children understand the importance of relationships extremely well. They may offer belonging, status, money, friendship or the appearance of protection long before their intentions become clear. This is one of the reasons relationship-based practice is so important. At St Giles, we have seen repeatedly that the relationship is not simply something that sits alongside an intervention; in many cases, it is what makes the intervention possible in the first place.
This kind of work takes time and resource. Short interventions, rigid referral thresholds and case closures will not always be enough for young people experiencing complex and sustained harm. Exploitation does not work to a six-week model, and those seeking to groom a young person do not disappear because a professional case has been closed. Effective support needs to recognise the persistence of the pressures young people may be facing and the time it can take to build enough trust for change to become possible.
We also need to be more realistic about what we are asking of young people when we tell them to leave violence or exploitation behind. Stepping away may mean losing perceived protection, identity, status, friendship or income. Simply telling a young person to make a better choice is unlikely to be enough if the alternative we are offering does not feel safer, stronger or more meaningful. If we want young people to choose differently, we have to make sure there is genuinely something different to choose.
That is why youth safety has to be about more than responding well after an incident. It requires us to recognise vulnerability earlier, create credible alternatives and develop relationships strong enough to withstand setbacks and difficult moments. It also asks something of us as professionals: to remember why we came into this work in the first place and to make sure systems and processes do not pull us too far away from that purpose.
If we are serious about youth safety, we cannot keep waiting for children to become visible only once harm has taken place. We need to become better at recognising what is happening around them, responding earlier and creating the conditions in which a different future becomes possible.
Further reading:
https://www.stgilestrust.org.uk/exploitation-thrives-in-fragmented-systems/
https://www.stgilestrust.org.uk/new-guidance-signals-a-welcome-shift-in-how-we-protect-children/