by Kathy Masterson
CHILDLINE has launched an emergency appeal in Limerick this week for donations so that vulnerable children can continue to access its service at nighttime.
Nationally, the charity needs €1.2 million in funding to keep the 24-hour service operational. The nighttime service has been available for 15 of Childline’s last 26 years of operation.
Childline’s Limerick office is currently staffed by 43 volunteers who have provided more than 5,000 hours of listening time so far this year, answering a total of 31,291 calls.
Childline’s regional services manager for the West/Mid West region, Alex O’Keeffe, believes that the service needs to be available on a 24-hour basis to give a voice to the most vulnerable children.
“No child is going to ring Childline at three or four in the morning for no good reason. A lot of the nighttime calls would be distressed and anxious kids who need reassurance and need to feel secure. Without placing blame on the parents or guardians, sometimes they’re just unable to provide that.
“About 14 per cent of calls to Childline are related to abuse, so we do believe that it needs to be a 24-hour service. However, they’re not always emergency calls, sometimes they’re just looking for somebody to listen,” she told the Limerick Post.
According to Ms O’Keeffe, the main issues that children discuss with Childline volunteers are: personal life, abuse, mental health, relationships, and sexuality.
Childline, which is run by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, is almost completely reliant on public donations.
Ms O’Keeffe commented: “It’s partly to do with the economic downturn, people have a lot less to put into the buckets. Then all the recent controversies surrounding charities have affected people making donations; the trust they had is gone. We are 95 per cent funded by public donations, so all this really has an affect on us.”
If the nighttime service is closed, it will mean that 45,000 calls from vulnerable children around Ireland will go unanswered in 2015.
The service receives 1,800 calls per day nationally, with nighttime calls counting for 11 per cent of those.
Childline’s emergency public appeal ‘SaveChildline24’ runs through the month of November.
Donations can be made online at www.savechildline24.ie or a €4 text donation can be made by texting CHILDLINE to 57911.
