Children's helpline: a single number, booklets and photos. International Day of Child Helpline

All people need help from time to time. Parents, friends, relatives can become excellent advisers. But sometimes this is not enough. Therefore, there are special services that are at different levels ready to help a person. Do you know that there is a child helpline? For information on why you need it and how to get help, read the article.

What it is?

All children in the school should be told that there is a specific psychological help that they can get. The practice of communicating with psychologists is well developed in the countries of Europe and the USA and fully justified the trust. So when can a child seek advice? A list of problems that a specialist on the other end of the wire can help with is simply huge. These are various everyday difficulties, and difficulties in communicating with parents or peers, problems in the family or newly born personal life, dislocation in school, etc. Experts will also help in such seemingly trivial situations when the child received a deuce and Just afraid to go home or do not want to go to school, because today there is a heavy control. All questions and problems that children address to specialists are important and necessary.

goal

So, what are the main goals pursued by a child helpline?

1. Provision of completely free and necessarily anonymous advice on the solution of certain issues.
2. Providing timely assistance to children who are in a difficult situation.
3. Early detection of dysfunctional families in which children are raised.
4. Prevention of stressful and suicidal moods of children, strengthening of family relations.
5. Preventive measures against ill-treatment, as well as child and family problems.
6. Parent consultation on parenting.

Important points

Today, unfortunately, not all children know that there is a child helpline. However, information about this is actively spreading, and already, undoubtedly, there are first successes in solving a number of children's problems. It would be desirable to say that the consultative psychological help is provided by excellent specialists who have undergone specialized training and know how to help even in the most difficult and seemingly insoluble situations. As for the calls themselves, they are provided free of charge from home and mobile phones, which makes psychological assistance accessible even to the youngest children (who do not have money). Calling a single number of a child's helpline: 8-800-2000-122, not only children (regardless of age) can receive help, but also their parents or persons who replace them. That is, not only kids, but also adults, who do not know how to act in this or that situation, which concerns the upbringing of the child or the solution of his problem, can ask for advice.

International practice

Every year in Russia on May 17 celebrate the International Day of Children's Telephone Trust. The main goal of this celebration is to draw the attention of as many people as possible to the need to solve the problems of children. After all, often adults do not attach importance to the fact that a child can have difficult situations, arguing that the children in principle there are no serious problems. However, this is completely wrong, and practice shows the opposite. It should be noted that the initiative to create such a special holiday belongs to Child Helpline International, which was officially recognized by the Committee on the Rights of the Child at the UN. It is also interesting that the community includes 150 countries, including Russia.

Domestic Practice

As for our country, we actively took part in the creation of a hotline for children in 2007, when the Russian Association of Child Helplines was organized with the help of the National Fund for the Protection of Children against Cruel Treatment. More than 280 telephone trust services are already active. Every year, their specialists take up to half a million calls from children, adolescents, and their parents. Since 2010, there is a single children's helpline (number: 8-800-2000-122), to which almost all services are connected (some work by local numbers in the regions where they operate). As mentioned above, you can call this number from both landline and mobile phones for free.

Some statistics

The fact that the child's helpline is of great benefit is also spoken by statistics. So, for two years (from 2010 to 2012) a single number received 1 518 813 calls, which were distributed to the following categories of the population: almost 57 percent - from children and adolescents, more than 10 percent - from parents and individuals from About 33 percent - from other citizens. There are also completely different problems, for the solution of which people turn for consultative and psychological help. So, the most common of them are those that deal with child abuse. Most often, children and adults call the helpline in the following cases:

• Child abuse in the family (12,830 calls) and outside the family (5,254 calls);
• Cruel treatment of the child in the circle of peers (more than 13 thousand calls);
• Sexual violence against children (approximately 2,000 calls).

About the holiday

Many may have a question: "Why does the Day of the Children's Telephone Trust?" Everything is simple, its main purpose is to spread information about the functioning of this service. This is a very important mission, as, unfortunately, not all children and adults are aware of the existence of such assistance. What happens on this day? All methods of dissemination of information are good, because the main goal is to attract as much as possible the attention of surrounding people. How can you promote a child helpline? Booklets are an excellent way out. Small information sheets are always prepared in advance, which carry full information on the functioning of this service. Such leaflets can be distributed not only on this one day. They are often carried around the schools, there can also post special posters with general information about the work of this service.

How else can you promote a child helpline? Photo - also a good helper. You can just take pictures of people who are holding consultations at the other end of the wire (men and women whose type inspires confidence), and thus attract the attention of passers-by. A good practice is also various street activities, such as, for example, drawing on asphalt (necessarily with the winners) or small competitions (for example, who will rather remember the single number of a child's helpline).

Other information dissemination

How else can you propagate the Russian / international child helpline? For this, volunteers will be needed who can conduct an information campaign in schools and other educational institutions. In this case, hand-out materials must be available - as personal ones in the form of booklets, leaflets, and general, such as posters. It is also good to conduct a specialized all-school lesson, where children will be given full information about the work of this service (it is good if the meeting ends with answers to questions from students). A huge benefit is brought by training lessons, where in the game form, children are informed about the principle of the service, and it becomes easier for them to navigate, in which situations it is possible to turn to a specialist for help. At such lessons situations that can arise in the life of each child lose, they give the kids the correct model of behavior in solving their problems. It is also good to conduct a universal questionnaire for school students, due to this it will be possible to identify a potential group of problem children and work more closely with them directly.