CHILDLINE’S 1,000 CALLS EVERY DAY IN JUST ONE YEAR
Fears over lack of after-hours support by social services
DESPERATE children made more than 1,000 calls a day to Childline last year, the ISPCC revealed yesterday. It received a total of 405,255 contacts by phone, texts and requests for online conversation. The charity added more than 75% of calls were made outside of social services’ office hours. Labour TD Jan O’sullivan said the figures highlight the need for a 24/7 State help network. She added: “The Government also needs to ramp up efforts to recruit more social workers into the system and move to encourage those trained staff who might have moved to other areas to return to this line of work. “Services like Childline provide tremendous support to vulnerable children but can’t be expected to do the heavy lifting where the State is falling short.” Launching its annual report for 2016, the ISPCC said it received 385,673 calls and 19,582 texts and online requests. The majority of phone contacts were at a low level of need but just under 1% were categorised as level four, which requires “significant intervention”.
HIGH RISK
The ISPCC said this means there are around six calls a day from children at high risk. A total of 71% of phone contacts were from boys while 72% of texts and online requests were from girls. The report found 99% of children were satisfied with the service they received. And 97% said their knowledge or understanding of their issue had increased. A total of 77% had changed their behaviour as a result of the intervention while 33% had a positive community-wide effect because of their level of change. There were 62,000 hours of volunteer help but the charity has had more difficulty recruiting in recent years. Almost 80% of funding is through donations. Interim chief Caroline O’sullivan said: “The ongoing support of the public and corporate partners is essential.” Childline services are available by calling 1800 666666.
Government needs to ramp up its efforts to hire social workers TD JAN O’SULLIVAN YESTERDAY