Childline, the social support for children and young people, were launched 33 years ago in the UK having. They are an example of an important preventive and caring initiative, a platform for counselling. Apart from phone-line it also has a chat function based online platform childline.org.uk and an app called For Me. Their annual report based upon which this article is written illustrates that the 24/7 work of the about 1500 volunteers and other members of the Childline is vital and often a life-saving free, private and confidential service.
In 2019 there were 250,281 counselling sessions to children and young people. Over 3.5 million visits to the Childline website and over 41,000 posts were submitted and published on the Childline message boards. The number of counselling due to sexual abuse has sadly increased by 16% and similarly, cases when the call was due to neglect, emotional or physical abuse too. Also, loneliness and isolation seem to grow year by year in spite of the fact of our ever-expanding social networking possibilities.
In four out of five counselling sessions children and young people indicated that they felt better able to cope after counselling.
In the review you can find out more about:
- what young people are telling (their main concerns, problems, issues)
- referrals to other agencies
- their website features
- child stories about the help their received
- future plans with childline
- volunteer networks
- more information about their sessions.