‘Childline’ receives millionth call
In
October the millionth call was made to the national confidential helpline for
children, teenagers and parents.
Just
over a year had passed since the helpline’s number, 8-800-200-01-22 had started
working. It was set up within the framework of the National Information
Campaign against Child Abuse by the Fund for the Support of Disadvantaged Children
Situation. The aim of this free, anonymous service is to prevent family
conflict and crises, and avoid children becoming stressed or suicidal by
providing emergency counselling to children and parents.The fund bears the cost
of the calls. It has also organised training for the counsellors and their
supervisors, and published and distributed a booklet to the regions entitled
‘The National Confidential Telephone Line for Children Accessible via a Single
National Number, 8-800-200-01-22, and conducted an awareness raising campaign
in the federal media.
Today,
211 child telephone facilities are operating in 83 regions of the Russian
Federation using the single national number. Calls may be made from any
telephone anywhere in Russia without charge. It is mainly children and
teenagers (57.6%) that phone; adults doing so more rarely (42.4%). The greatest
number of calls are made to the service regions of the following okrugs
(provinces): Sibirsky (27%) Privolzhsky (21%) and Tsentralny (20%). The trio of
leaders for the quantity of calls made over the year are the following regions
– Kemerovo (nearly 60,000) Moscow (around 59,000) and Chelyabinsk (around
45,000).