Our dedicated team of experts, directed by Kelvin Lay MBE, supports governments, agencies, and frontline responders world-wide by providing the tools and knowledge to tackle child sexual exploitation and abuse effectively.
C-TAP empowers agencies to move beyond collecting and analysing data to putting insights into action, safeguarding children now and in the future.
Childlight Technical Advisory Programme Team
Kelvin Lay MBE
Director of the Childlight Technical Advisory Program (C-TAP)
Lydia Davenport
Manager Childlight Technical Advisory Program (C-TAP).
Paul Beck
Manager Childlight Technical Advisory Program (C-TAP).
Tara Pierre-Nina
Programme Manager Childlight Technical Advisory Program (C-TAP).
Kelvin Lay MBE
Director of the Childlight Technical Advisory Program (C-TAP)
Kelvin has significant experience in UK and international law enforcement. While with the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) in Kenya, Kelvin set up Africa’s first dedicated child exploitation and human trafficking units.
Prior to this he was a Senior Investigating Officer within The Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre specialising in extra territorial prosecutions relating to child exploitation across the Globe.
Lydia Davenport
Manager Childlight Technical Advisory Program (C-TAP).
As Technical Advisory Program Manager, Lydia supports both the research and operational elements of Childlight.
With a 20-year career in UK law enforcement, in varied policing areas including Director of Intelligence, criminal investigations, and child safeguarding, also leading offender management and criminal justice departments.
Prior to Childlight, Lydia worked in academia in the UAE, lecturing on child protection, ethics and investigative programs and publishing in academic journals on child protection.
Lydia was seconded to the UK Home Office and the National Crime Agency working on international development programs. With the NCA, she was operations lead for child protection projects across the British Overseas Territories and involved in the development of a Child Protection Unit in Kenya. Lydia was a Senior Policing Advisor for the Home Office International Directorate.
Lydia has investigative and leadership certifications, underpinning commitment to public safety, education, and sustainable international capacity-building in child protection.
Paul Beck
Manager Childlight Technical Advisory Program (C-TAP).
Paul is an accomplished law enforcement and child protection expert with over 26 years of dedicated service in combating human trafficking and child exploitation. His extensive experience spans various international and national roles in the corporate sector and law enforcement, including significant contributions to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in the East Horn of Africa.
Paul career reflects a deep commitment to protecting vulnerable populations and addressing the complex challenges of human trafficking and child exploitation. His work has led to significant advancements in law enforcement practices and victim support systems across multiple countries.
Tara Pierre-Nina
Programme Manager Childlight Technical Advisory Program (C-TAP).
Tara has multiple years of experience in project management, internationally. Prior to joining Childlight, Tara worked in Kenya, where she led an implementation team at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (GMCP). This involved working closely alongside law enforcement, military and government partners in Africa, the Indian Ocean, Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) and Pakistan to organise capacity building projects and facilitate a cohesive response to maritime crime within the region.
How C-TAP Works
Purpose
To safeguard children across the world from sexual exploitation and abuse
Vision
A world where data-driven actions strengthen child protection systems, enabling timely and effective action to prevent, detect, and respond to child sexual exploitation and abuse
Mission
To unlock and translate data to catalyse timely, coordinated action to prevent, detect, and respond to child sexual exploitation and abuse, especially in countries facing the highest risk and most urgent need
C-TAP has 5 strategic objectives:
1. Making prevalence data available to drive coordinated global action
2. Improving the quality, integrity, and reproducibility of CSEA data
3. Supporting countries to meet and validate those standards
4. Tracking improvements in data quality over time
5. Building capacity to use CSEA data effectively
Introduction: safeguarding children with data that drives action
Childlight exists to protect children from sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) around the world. Our mission is to see CSEA recognised and tackled as a global public health emergency - one that is preventable and treatable, not just a crime responded to after harm has occurred.
But systemic change takes time - and children can’t wait.
In Childlight’s early work, we uncovered a stark reality: vast amounts of high-quality, actionable data on CSEA were being collected globally, yet most of it remained unused by national police forces or child protection agencies. Crucial data - such as cyber tips, online offender data, and image databases - was not being analysed or acted upon, even where children were at immediate risk.
Our initial approach was to sound the alarm, urging countries and global agencies to respond. But the response was slow or absent. So Childlight stepped in. C-TAP was created to catalyse action. Its original goal was to help countries access and triage CyberTipline data from the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), where more than 36 million reports were filed in 2023, many left unopened. Since then, C-TAP’s scope has grown. We now help countries unlock and use critical CSEA data that is often not publicly known or easily accessible. At the same time, we support a co-ordinated ecosystem of partners already working in this space.
Too often, these efforts are siloed, duplicative, or under-resourced. Childlight’s role is not to replace them, but to connect the dots, unlock barriers, and drive coordinated, urgent, and sustained action to safeguard children.
C-TAP is not about solving everything. It is about catalysing practical, sustainable change by:
• Shining a light on existing, underused data
• Strengthening national capacity to use it
• Uniting actors across sectors to act on it
Conclusion: a catalyst for action, not a fixer of all things
Childlight is not trying to solve everything. But we are making a difference - by connecting the data, the people and the tools that already exist, and putting them to work to protect children now.
Through C-TAP, we are:
• Making invisible data visible
• Strengthening national systems
• And building alliances for urgent, evidence-driven action
Because children can’t wait.
Working with C-TAP
If you would like to learn more about the work of C-TAP or work with the team get in touch.
Into the Light
Childlight has produced the world's first global estimates of the scale of online child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Lighthouse
Our learning log shares insights and findings from our ongoing research and projects – to help illuminate a clearer path for others.
Global Data Fellows
The Global Data Fellows Programme strengthens expertise in child protection, and drives innovative research.