The Voices of Children and Young People

How Child Helplines
Support Children
and Young People
Child helplines are a resource of readily
accessible and reliable information and
support for children and young people who
have health related or other concerns. Child
helpline counsellors are active listeners and
in many cases the first people that children
and young people open up to. Moreover,
child helpline services are frequently the
first entry point into the broader child
protection system.
Experts from St. Patrick’s Mental Health Services in
Ireland, who wrote the paper that underlies the
psychosocial and mental health sections of this
publication, concluded that a child helpline renders
children and young people a unique service that provides
several benefits over regular mental health services.
They consider the most practical advantage of child
helplines to be the free-of-charge service which makes
them accessible to a wide range of socio-economic
groups. Furthermore, child helplines do not have the
long waiting lists that can be frequently encountered
in health services, and they do not request referrals to
commence counselling. Lastly, child helplines’ anonymity
in counselling helps children and young people to
overcome the feelings of stigma attached to seeking
support on psychosocial and mental health issues.
Indeed, research carried out at St Patrick’s Mental
Health services in 2015 indicates that the stigma
regarding mental health is very prominent: four in ten
respondents consider treatment for a mental health
problem to be a sign of personal failure. Two-thirds of
respondents express reluctance to hire a person with a
history of mental illness believing them to be unreliable,
and nearly one-third indicate they would not willingly
accept someone with a mental health problem as a close
friend. This stigma and a lack of resources – combined
with a child or young person’s dependency on parents,
teachers or other trusted adults to access appropriate
help – makes obtaining support very difficult.
Child helplines around the globe can differ in their manner
of counselling. However, support from a child helpline is
non-directive in principle and based on active listening
rather than directing the child on a set care pathway.
This provides children and young people with an outlet
where they can feel heard, independently of parental
involvement. Parents often have the best intentions, but
can be too focussed on trying to fix a problem rather than
on simply listening to what the child has to say.
A strong emphasis in the training for counsellors at child
helplines is placed on empowering the children so that
they have more control over their lives. Perhaps most
importantly, the support received from a child helpline
occurs at a place and time of a child or young person’s
own choosing, and it can end whenever they want. This
aspect of their own control plays a large role in children
and young people’s willingness to contact child helplines.
The support of child helplines works alongside other
interventions without interference. Child helplines are
often the first service a child reaches out to, and aims
at building trust from the start. A positive experience
with a child helpline makes it more likely that children
will trust other services as well. At the same time, child
helplines can provide alternative or bridging support
where waiting lists in other services can cause delays in
receiving specialist help.
Child helplines can facilitate
access to and build trust in
other child protection services.
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