About ChildLine

ChildLine is the UK’s free 24-hour helpline for children and young people with any problem.

Last year ChildLine counselled almost 120,000 children and young people about a wide range of problems.  Many of these children were in great distress; others were in danger of being hurt or hurting themselves.  ChildLine met with thousands of children in UK secondary schools through CHIPS (ChildLine in Partnership with Schools).  The charity also helped many thousands more children who needed straightforward advice or information.

But as well as listening to children, ChildLine gives them a voice – taking what they say about their lives and relaying it to policy-makers, parents and people who work with children, so that children’s lives can be changed for the better.

ChildLine believes that no child should have to suffer abuse, be terrified to go to school, or live in fear.  Find out more at www.childline.org.uk

Our history

In the spring of 1986, the BBC consumer programme That’s Life!, presented by Esther Rantzen, appealed to viewers for their help in conducting a survey on child abuse. The BBC ran a helpline which was jammed by children reporting abuse.

The abuse they described was mainly sexual abuse which they were disclosing for the first time. Yet the children felt able to confide in an unseen, unnamed person at the end of a telephone line. 

In October 1986, a BBC programme about child abuse, called ChildWatch, launched ChildLine. BT provided ChildLine with an office and with a simple memorable telephone number, 0800 1111. The logo, a smiling telephone, was shown on the programme. The response that first night (approximately 50,000 attempted calls were logged) and subsequent nights exceeded all expectations.

ChildLine quickly took root in the minds of children as ‘their’ line.