“The Smile of the Child” attends the Regional Consultation of Child Helplines in Europe
15 November 2024
CHI’s Regional Consultation of Child Helplines in Europe 2024, was held on the 9th and 10th October, was by Børns Vilkår and co-hosted by Child Helpline International in Copenhagen, Denmark. This year’s theme was “Child helplines and the future of children’s rights”.
“The Smile of the Child” was there as a member of Child Helplines Internaational and actively participated with examples, good practices and scientific positions derived from its many years of experience through its 4 Helplines & Hotlines -1056, 116000, 116111, 1017) that operate actively 24 hours a day, 265 days a year.
The aim of the Regional Consultation Europe was to discuss effective ways to ensure that the network of child helplines in Europe can continue to provide the best possible services to the children and young people it serves, in a changing child rights landscape, with the use of all the possible resources -technology, good practices etc. Three basics topics were discussed:
- Child rights issues and trends
- Safe Technology to safely and ethically leverage technology to support CHI’s work
- Sustainability of child helplines
Sessions were held on “Mental health”, “Child Helplines, Technology, and Data”, “Reporting Back on Governance at Child Helpline International”, “A Sustainable Future for Child Helplines”, with Small Group Discussions in order for participants to exchange perspectives, knowledge and good practices in a more effective way.
Mental health issues, violence and family relationships are among the most common concerns for people calling the helpline, as well as delinquency and aggressiveness in adolescence, that need to be highlighted in terms of prevention. An excellent example of a good practice that was mentioned was that “the on-site intervention action activated by the Helpline in collaboration with the competent authorities” to provide immediate psychosocial support to children at risk.
During the discussion Ms. Stavroula Spiropoulou, Psychologist and Coordinator of the Organization’s Center for Child Abuse and Exploitation, mentioned that for the year 2023 “The Smile of the Child” handled 615 cases (1.7 per day) of suicidal behaviour, suicidal ideation, and self-harm that we were informed about in our Helpline and our Chat Application. Almost 70% of the total calls and chats on the topic of self-harm were adolescents 13-17 of age, with girls overrepresented in this population.
During the “Child Helplines, Technology, and Data” session, it was mentioned that Helplines provide huge databases that are necessary for the implementation and development of AI models, which enable children to access support discretely, but this also raises concern for most actors as it poses challenges on issues of data security, privacy and ethical concerns, anonymisation of data, etc.
During the “Reporting Back on Governance at Child Helpline International” session, Mrs. Piji Protopsaltis, Coordinator of International Cooperation of "The Smile of the Child" and CHI Deputy Regional Representative for Europe, served as moderator and facilitated an exchange on issues related to the Network’s governance.
The sustainability challenges for the future of the Child Helplines in Europe, fundraising and advocacy were also discussed followed by good practices and ways to gain policy recognition. To conclude it was stressed that having the ability to measure and demonstrate the impact of child helplines on children’s rights and wellbeing is critical for sustainability.
All the sessions and focus groups were very interesting and fruitful, with an active participation from the member Child Helplines Europe, with excellent hospitality and a positive atmosphere. Participants were also given the opportunity to visit the Borns Vilkar Helpline, which was inspiring.
