Kids Helpline

Kids Helpline is a counselling service in Australia for people who are between 5 and 25 years old. Children & young people contact Kids Helpline to speak about problems in their lives. These problems range from fighting with friends and breaking up with a partner to suicidal thoughts and being hurt or abused. 

Kids Helpline employs about 110 people to work as counsellors. The call centres are based in Brisbane so all the calls that people make to the Kids Helpline go through to a call centre in Brisbane.  These counsellors listen to nearly 6,000 calls from young people each week. Kids Helpline is run by yourtown. Most of the money needed for it to run is raised through lotteries held by yourtown. The Australian Government also helps by giving some money. Optus is their biggest sponsor.

 History 
Kids Helpline was opened for taking calls on the 25 March 1991. On the first day more than 3,200 young people rang up to ask for help. By the 17th day, 122,000 thousand calls had been made. Not many of these calls were able to be answered. After a year of been open for people to call the Kids Helpline had answered 75,000 calls.

Kids Helpline was added into different states one at a time. In 1993 it was open into the whole nation of Australia. In 1999 Email Counselling was offered for the first time and in May 2000 Web Counselling was offered for the first time.

Since the first call was taken in 1991, the Kids Helpline has been contacted more than 8 million (8,000,000) times.

 Ways of Contacting 
The Kids Helpline offers three different ways of communicating with them.

 Phone 
Phoning 1800 55 1800 anywhere in Australia will connect you to a counselor from Kids Helpline. The contact by phone can be made at any time of the day and on any day in the week. This is the quickest way of getting support. If the problem is really urgent Kids Helpline advises that contacting them by phone is the best way to get support immediately. Contacting this number in Australia is for free using a landline & mobile phone.

 Instant Messaging 
This is called Web Counselling. Web Counselling allows a person who wants help to talk over the Internet to a counselor. This is done through instant messaging, or sending messages back and forth between a person wanting help and a counselor in a chat room (similar to Skype and eHeadspace). Web Counselling is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

 Email 
A person needing help may send an email to the Kids Helpline and then wait for a response. This is the slowest way of getting help because it sometimes takes a counselor up to two weeks to reply to each email. For a person needing immediate assistance it is recommended to phone Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

 References 

 Other websites 
 Kids Helpline website

Category:Non-profit organizations of Australia
Category:1991 establishments in Australia