CHILDLINE ADVICE: How Ant & Dec are helping us ease children’s worries

Celebrities are helping children cope with their worries.

Thousands of young people contact Childline every year, a reliable constant amongst all the changes we’ve seen in 2020, and due in part to the excellent work of our Schools Service staff and volunteers.

They usually visit primary schools across the country to deliver our Speak Out Stay Safe assemblies, and prior to lockdown, delivered these assemblies to more than 1.5 million schoolchildren across the country.

The assemblies share safeguarding information in age-appropriate language, helping children recognise abuse, explaining it is never a child’s fault and how they can speak to trusted adults.

In Sunderland, we visited 27 schools and reached 6,626 primary schoolchildren in 2019/20 alone.

Right now, we can’t deliver the assemblies in person. To ensure we keep children – and our teams – as safe as possible, we’ve teamed up with Ant & Dec to make sure children know what to do and who to speak to if something is upsetting them.

They host our new virtual Speak Out Stay Safe assembly, ensuring children can still receive this vital information, following reports from NSPCC experts that the risk of abuse and neglect has increased during lockdown.

Just since children returned to school in September, the NSPCC Helpline has seen a 10% increase in the number of contacts about sexual abuse.

Lockdown trapped many children with their abusers, and the main issues raised with the helpline were physical and emotional abuse and neglect. It is essential children know what to do and who to speak to if something is happening which makes them feel scared or anxious.

Now, our 30-minute Speak Out Stay Safe assembly is available to every primary school across the UK, along with teaching materials which also look at additional worries children are experiencing during the pandemic.

We’re ensuring we empower children with the confidence and knowledge to identify and speak out against abuse.

Despite everything that’s happened this year, we’re still here, on the frontline for children, and we’re not going anywhere.