Childline may curtail service due to funding shortfall

Childline, the support service for children, has warned it may no longer be able to provide 24-hour nationwide support, due to a reduction in charitable donations.

The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC), which runs Childline, says its flagship service is reaching "breaking point" and a fall-off in support is linked to recent controversies over the use of charitable funds in other organisations.

It said it received more than 600,000 contacts last year and responded to about 450,000 through its phone- and web-based services. A large proportion of contacts involved children talking about abuse and welfare (up to 15 per cent of contacts) and mental health (up to 20 per cent).

The ISPCC will today provide details on its financial situation when its annual general meeting is held in Dublin. It is not the first time it has warned about its financial future: in 2011 it said it might have to shut due to lack of funds.

Donations

Childline has been operating for 25 years and is largely funded through donations, though it did receive funding last year from the Health Service Executive’s National Office for Suicide Prevention.

As well as its traditional phone services, Childline also operates an online bullying support service that includes live one-to-one text messaging for children and young people affected by bullying.

More than 60 per cent of charities operating in Ireland have reported often serious falls in donations since scandals involving the Central Remedial Clinic, Rehab and the wider sector took hold.

The Wheel, a national network of some 950 charities, reports that almost half of the 297 surveyed organisations have suffered drops in public funding of as much as 10 per cent since last November. The fall-off in public confidence has hit the sector when many services are in increasing demand, the Wheel said.

About two-thirds of affected charities say they have taken damage-limitation measures to combat perceptions of donations being used to fund executive salaries, focusing on increasing transparency, and have taken steps to show internal governance structures have been strengthened.

These include making details of executive pay available, publishing accounts online and signing up to a governance code in place since 2012.