ChildLine closure fears for safety of vulnerable

At present, ChildLine workers answer calls made to the charity’s well-known 0800 1111 number from a dedicated office in a building at High Court in The Calls area of Leeds city centre.

But the NSPCC, which took over the service after it suffered a funding crisis in 2006, now wants to stop answering phones in the city and train staff to advise young people through a website instead.

As part of the move, the ChildLine offices at High Court will be closed and volunteers will be asked to report for counselling shifts at the NSPCC’s Leeds headquarters in Albion Street.

It is understood the charity’s paid employees are now being consulted over redundancy, although the NSPCC said ChildLine would continue to answer phone calls with those from Yorkshire routed to other bases.

A volunteer counsellor for ChildLine in Leeds, Luke Storey, 26, said: “We are concerned that some calls are going to be missed and vulnerable children are going to be left to their own devices.

“We understand that the NSPCC has to make changes and respond to children who make contact via the internet, but completely closing the telephone service in Leeds seems to us to be fundamentally wrong.

“A lot of volunteers for the charity are older people and they are not as confident on the internet and don’t really want to be stopped from doing voice work.

“If the phone service is stopped the number of volunteers could fall further, leading to more problems for ChildLine.

Volunteers have set up a petition in a bid to halt the changes and have compiled figures which show the Leeds base answered more than 28,000 phone calls last year compared to 4,000 internet requests.

Just last month, ChildLine founder Esther Rantzen was in Leeds to visit major sponsor First Direct bank and she appealed for more volunteers to come forward to answer the phones in the city.

The former BBC That’s Life presenter, who set up the service in 1986, was not available for comment yesterday, but on her visit she said: “Children and young people who contact ChildLine often have no where else to turn and in some cases our counsellors are literally life-savers to children who are frightened and alone.

“That’s why public donations and the support of businesses are so important. ChildLine provides a safe and confidential space for abused and unhappy children to talk about their problems.”

The NSPCC said its plans were not about cost-cutting, but “responding to a growing demand”. It also plans to close call centres in Exeter, Edinburgh and move its Welsh base into an NSPCC office.

A spokesman for the charity said the move to internet counselling in Yorkshire “would not impact on children wanting to call and speak to a counsellor”.

The charity said young people would still be able to do so because calls are managed through a national switchboard and “not directly linked to a regional base”.

The spokesman added: “Our priority is being able to answer any contact from a child 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“ChildLine is transforming its counselling services to meet a growing demand for help from children, particularly those making contact online. This is part of a wider development programme for ChildLine.

“Following this review, in Leeds we are proposing to relocate our ChildLine centre to the nearby NSPCC regional centre where there will be online counselling only.

“We are also proposing to increase the number of ChildLine volunteers in the remaining centres over the next five years.

“Their roles will be expanded so by 2016 we will be delivering significantly more counselling hours in the most cost-effective way.

“At this point, no final decisions have been taken. We will be working closely with affected volunteers and staff as we consider the proposals.

“Our proposal is that Leeds will be dedicated to online counselling.

“We need to keep pace with how children use digital technology and we know that children and young people turn more to online based support.

“Our online services show a rapidly increasing number of children registering and utilising all of the services available.”

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