Children & Young People First

“We want you to be the professional that you would have needed in that child’s situation”

Here at CYP First, we make sure that the voice of the child and our work life experiences are reflected in our training.
The rights of the child and their voice will be at the centre of all we deliver and our passion for changing practices will be evident in our delivery.
We pride ourselves on delivering quality and the best value for money and our feedback speaks for itself.
Our training style is informal, relaxed, and even though the subject matter is very real and at times graphic, we aim to impart our knowledge in an approach that will leave you remembering the day with a smile, whilst giving you tools to carry forward into the future.
We aim to transform your practice and response to children, by delivering creative, innovative and practical training, through years of experience.

Five orange curved lines radiating outward on a black background.

“We’ve had the sleepless nights, taken the 2am phonecall… we are passionate, open, honest and real about our work”

- Helen & Andy

Helen Mattehws and Andy Thompson, CYP First.

CYP First bring you decades of frontline knowledge and practice in safeguarding, from the collective expertise of a former CEO of an exploitation charity with 20+ years experience, Helen Matthews, and Andy Thompson, an outstanding children’s home manager with 26 years experience.

We have a network of professional, experienced and like-minded facilitators individually matched to your requirements, your sector and the training you require.

‘Passionate and Real’, Helen is a Child Exploitation professional dedicated to transforming responses for children and raising awareness of hidden client groups.
Innovative and creative in her approach and with many years of on-the-ground experience of working with victims of all forms of Exploitation, Helen has been involved with Local Authorities across the country helping them in their strategic response to Exploitation. Helen has supported and championed the expansion of Exploitation services to include hidden groups or missed groups, Transition, Boys & Young Men, Marginalised and new emerging communities, LGBTQ+, Siblings, Parents and the opportunities for Early Identification & Intervention. Helen prides herself at being at the forefront of creating a response for the ever changing landscape of Child Exploitation.
Helen has 23 years first hand experience of working with Child Exploitation survivors and is the former CEO of Street Teams, a Charity creatively responding to all aspects of exploitation, Parents and siblings, transition, missing, radicalisation, BAME community engagement, faith sector CSE and CCE engagement, B & YM, children over exposed to pornography.
Andy is a national trainer in CSE, County Lines, Safeguarding, Contextual Safeguarding, Transitional Safeguarding, Modern Day Slavery, Trafficking, Trauma & Attachment, Behaviour, Self-Harm, Missing from Care and Radicalisation, as well as here at CYP First, Andy is a previous Operations Manager at Street Teams, a charity working within CSE, County Lines and all types of exploitation of children. Andy also set up and managed the first registered home in England specifically for helping young people suffering from Child Sexual Exploitation.
Andy’s latest CSE home received OUTSTANDING in all areas, with no requirements, on their Ofsted inspection. The report is now being used as a Best Practice Model Report for both Ofsted and the Department for Education, with regard to the inspection of CSE homes.
Andy has 20 years within the residential sector on the front line and speaks from the heart. Andy is a trainer in Trauma, Stockholm syndrome, Behaviour Management, Physical Intervention, Ofsted consultancy, residential procedures, responding and working with survivors of CSE and CE.