Childline Gibraltar

Enhanced support for young people

Every day of the year, Childline Gibraltar’s free helpline service is there for children and young people desperate to talk to someone they can trust. The service receives around 800 calls every year.

But helpline staff and volunteers were finding increasing numbers of calls were from young people with more complex mental health issues or in high risk situations. Callers also wanted more support to make lifestyle changes. Keen to improve the service they offer, the charity decided to adapt their counselling model and give staff the opportunity to develop new skills. This would help make sure they were equipped to deal with more issues and could contribute to callers immediate and long-term wellbeing and safety.

Childline has run a Helpline in Gibraltar for more than 18 years.
The service receives around 800 calls a year.
A team of more than 100 people run Childline Gibraltar – 10 staff and around 90 volunteers.

Building capacity

Our 2023 grant of £24,515 to Childline Gibraltar will be used to implement their new Enhanced Counselling Model. It will also pay for existing and new staff to take part in the Enhanced Counselling Model Helpline Listener Training course. Initially, 18 staff and volunteers will be trained in the new model, so they can start implementing these new skills and expanding the support offered to children and young people. The charity will also recruit and train 12 new volunteers. In 2024, we gave a second grant of £10,615 – which has funded 12 new staff members to undertake the three-month Helpline Listening Training course.

Kusuma Trust has partnered with Childline Gibraltar since 2009, awarding a series of grants to cover their core costs, as well as fund coaching and mentoring for staff and a theatre workshop for young people. We fully support Childline’s Vision of ‘a society in which all children are loved, valued and able to fulfil their potential’.