Childline cash plea as suicide calls rise

CHILDLINE must be given more funding from government, 130 MPS have said in an open letter, as the helpline faces mounting demand from suicidal children.

The NSPCC said its helpline was struggling to cope with a growing number of complex cases, a rising number of which come in overnight as children are more likely to have access to tablets and mobile phones.

It now offers counselling via email, online chat and a mobile app but struggles to recruit volunteers to work unsociable hours.

Figures from the charity show the number of sessions for children struggling with suicidal thoughts and feelings rose from 8,835 in 201011 to 22,456 in 2016-17, and they now make up almost 10 per cent of the group’s counselling.

Two thirds of counselling sessions about mental and emotional health, self-harm and suicide are now delivered between 5pm and 9am, and one in three counselling sessions about mental health take place over the weekend.

In one in every four cases, calls or contacts went unanswered, the charity said, as not enough counsellors were available.

The letter, addressed to Jeremy Hunt, the Health and Social Care Secretary, is signed by Childline founder Dame Esther Rantzen as well as MPS including Luciana Berger, Andrew Selous and Yvette Cooper, and Conservative peers Lord Suri of Ealing and Lord Balfe.

It calls for money from a £300million pledge set out in the recently published government green paper on children’s mental health to be used to fund the service.

“Government must think more widely about where and when children need support in order to address the real mental health crisis our young people face,” the letter says. “The NSPCC urgently needs to increase both the number of available volunteers and to improve and expand the training that they receive.”