Wes Cunliffe’s life could have taken two different paths after he was repeatedly stabbed and left for dead at the end of a county lines drug run spanning 120 miles.

The community worker admits one would have led to prison or the prospect that he might not have been as lucky the next time he was tracked down by armed rivals on the streets.

Guided by words from his grandad, the man he called dad, the teenager took a different path that would lead to his present role saving other young souls from drugs and gangs with the St Giles Trust in Cardiff.

Wes, now 34, knows all too well the struggles they face.

His dad died when he was young and his mother became an alcoholic, spending most of the household budget on alcohol.

Aged 13, he began dealing drugs to provide for his two younger brothers, which ended with the teenager being a regular in the cells at Newport Central Police Station and twice ending up in a secure accommodation unit for young people.

One stay was for possession of a bladed article, drugs and a Section 5 public order offence. The other was initiated by the local authority for his own safety after he became a marked target.

‘It was a dark place,’ Wes says.

‘I got involved in county lines and I was on a trip back from England to Wales on the train when my life changed forever. A couple of lads followed me and they confronted me once I’d got off the train.

‘I tried to defend myself and the next thing I know I woke up in Neath Port Talbot Hospital. I was there for five days. There were lots of small wounds to my body and I narrowly survived, I needed 14 stitches.’

An unlikely exit route had previously been provided by a police officer who spotted his burst of pace as he ran away from a dog, outpacing it by 30 metres. His human pursuer turned out to be a big rugby fan from the South Wales Valleys, a heartland for the game.

Wes ended up playing for Ebbw Vale, a semi-professional team, after his guiding light bestowed some words he will never forget.

‘My grandad Owen, God rest him, who I called dad, told me it was an opportunity to forget everything that had happened before and walk away from my old life, he says. ‘I’ve never looked back since.’

The reformed character then began working for the youth charity, where he is helping young offenders to mend their ways amid rising levels of teenage murders across England and Wales.

‘Taking the role turned out to be the best thing I ever did,’ he says.

‘I’m talking directly to young people who, like I was, are disengaged from society and breaking the barriers between them and their families.

‘Fifty per cent of our team are people with experience of the criminal justice system, whether that be through gangs, violence, mental health or addictions, and we’ve all turned it around and are giving back to our communities. We’re going into young people’s homes, into police stations, and saying we’ve been in their shoes and showing them how they can change their lives.

‘I want to make sure they don’t make the same mistakes I did.’

The father of three, who lives in Cardiff, says many young people are ‘fed to the fire’ as they lapse back into the same destructive cycles after release from custody or secure accommodation.

The government has wasted £111.5 million on empty secure children’s home beds across England and Wales over the past decade, according to figures released by Labour.

The places went unused despite young people being turned away for stays and the setting being considered a valuable form of rehabilitation, according to the research.

Metro.co.uk previously reported on a warning from the prisons watchdog that young offenders are faced with an ‘acute’ and ‘inhumane’ lack of mental health beds, which includes places in homes.

Three years into his role, Wes is finding that those making the difficult transition into the outside world are faced with community support that only has piecemeal funding.

‘Young people are coming out of custody or secure accommodation and being thrown into the fire,’ he says. ‘They are falling through gaps in community care that also affect adults.

‘They may have been having support with mental health, substance misuse or emotional and anger problems while they were in the criminal justice system, but when they come out it’s gone.’

Gangs, drugs and weapons are an all too easy draw.

‘We build up good relationships with young people and their families, but we are only funded for fixed terms, whether it be 12 or 18 months,’ Wes says. ‘When they go away and come back they want to pick that back up with us, and it can’t always be the case. Rome wasn’t built in a day and it takes a while to get a young person back to a positive lifestyle.

‘We offer the lived experience to look at the journey a disengaged young person has taken and intervene to help them overcome the barriers in getting back to normality.

‘The government needs to review the funding for services like ours to be more long-standing in the communities that need us.’

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson responded: ‘We have committed an estimated £82 million to tackle youth reoffending and divert vulnerable individuals from a life of crime this year alone. Under this government we have 70 per cent fewer children in custody than a decade ago.’

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