I'm a proud Mancunian and one important conversation saved my life, now I help others ask the right questions

Daniel Wolstencroft has bravely been sharing his experience of surviving child sexual abuse with 98,000 social workers, youth workers and police officers in a bid to save the lives of others.

The motivational speaker from Manchester suffered abuse at the hands of his late grandfather and as a result said he made bad decisions that led to him serving multiple stints in prison.

The founder of website Lads Like Us has created a programme where survivors of abuse can share their experiences with professionals to encourage them to look past trauma related behaviour and instead get them to open up and seek help.

Daniel is on a mission to educate one million professionals with his team’s lived experience of abuse after he says one conversation changed the course of his life forever.

He said: “My behaviour at school went right off the rails. When I was at primary school I was that kid who was throwing chairs at teachers. I was that kid who was staring vacantly out of windows. Nobody ever sat me down and asked why I was behaving this way.

“I learned to put a mask on and I learned to pretend like everything was okay.”

At age 15, Daniel left school with one GCSE and got recruited into a gang where he experienced further abuse and began selling and taking drugs.

He said: “I got recruited because I wanted to be liked, I wanted to be loved and I wanted a sense of belonging.”

This led to numerous prison sentences spanning much of his adult life, until one day while on probation, he spoke with a drug support worker.

Daniel said: “This support worker was the first person to sit me down and say ‘Daniel, what’s up with you? Why are you behaving like this? Has anything ever happened to you?’”

This conversation made him re-evaluate his life.

Daniel said: “He put his foot in that revolving prison door, he yanked me out by my hood and he saved my life.”

Using social media, Daniel started sharing his story and the importance of speaking out.

As a result, Daniel was headhunted to be a consultant on the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. He held meetings with the head of safeguarding for NHS England and created a video on X which went viral and resulted in men to reaching out to him and sharing their stories.

In 2021, Daniel founded Lads Like Us and designed a programme called Million Pieces to encourage all people, but specifically men and boys to speak out about any trauma or toxic masculinity pressure they have faced.

He said: “Lots of professionals started getting in touch with me to come and speak to their teams. I’ve now trained 98,000 professionals across the UK.

“I’m on a mission to education a million professionals to get them to ask ‘why?’ and to basically treat people with respect and not to ignore them.”

Daniel has trained everyone from social workers to members of the police force and was recently asked to speak to medical students at Oxford University.

He said: “There was about 40 in the class and I sat them all in a circle and I said ‘I’m not interested in how clever you are, I want to know what you’re bringing to the table with your lived experience.’ This encouraged them to get comfortable with opening up.”

Daniel has now been invited back to Oxford to talk again and hopes to continue encouraging people to speak out.

He said: “The greatest gift I can give is giving someone the ability to speak because that sh*t saves lives.”

You can learn more about Danny’s work through his Lads Like Us website.