THE CHILDREN AND young people’s helpline, Childline, has said that more than 54,000 calls made to its service last year related to emotional abuse suffered by children.

The ISPCC – which runs Childline – released the statistic today and said that it had a record number of calls to the service. However, over 38 per cent of calls to the 1800 66 66 66 number are going unanswered because of a shortage in resources. The ISPCC quantifies this as “800 voices a day not being heard”.

Other stats from their 2011 report shows that Childline receives:

• over 2,360 calls and messages per day
• 839,258 calls received
• 23,536 texts, emails and one-to-one web chats received

The latest ISPCC campaign, launched today, focuses on the issue of emotional abuse. ISPCC chief executive Ashley Balbirnie said taht:

Emotional abuse undermines confidence and self-worth and can have a detrimental impact on a child. To highlight this, the ISPCC have launched the ‘Children believe what they are told’ campaign. Following on from our Anti-Bullying Week, and the reaction to this from schools, parents and young people nationwide, we know that words can leave deep scars that can have a lasting negative impact on children’s self-esteem.

The Ogilvy-produced video below aims to highlight the damage of emotional abuse. Do you think it’s effective? See here:

(via ISPCC/Youtube)