Edition 4, January 2024

Welcome to your winter edition of Shout Out, our newsletter for our family of corporate partners. We’re excited to be showcasing some of the amazing things you and your organisations have been doing to improve childhoods this year.

In this edition we’ll tell you all about how we’re keeping children safe online, and celebrate the passing of the Online Safety Bill. And we’ll show you how Childline continues to be there for every child, including through our new service Building Connections. All our work is only possible thanks to generous partners like you, so we hope this newsletter makes you feel proud of the difference our partnerships are making to children.

In the last edition of Shout Out, we told you all about Lidl GB’s support for our Day in the Lonely campaign, which raised awareness for Childline as a service for young people facing mental health concerns. We’re delighted to announce that the campaign won two awards: Most Effective One-Off Campaign at The Corporate Engagement Awards, and Charity Content Campaign of the Year at the UK Content Awards. Thank you, Lidl GB, for your ongoing support of Childline, to make sure every child has a place to open up about their mental health.

We're so pleased to have welcomed a range of companies to our family of corporate partners this year, including:

• Take Me Group
• Vodafone
• BIP Solutions
  

Jump to each section:

• Supporting children at Christmas
  
• Your fantastic fundraising
• Supporting parents and carers
• Keeping children safe online
• Building Connections: our new service for children
• Making sure Childline is here for every child
• Thank you

Lindt proudly supported the NSPCC this Christmas

For the seventh consecutive year, international chocolate manufacturer, Lindt & Sprüngli proudly supported the NSPCC to raise vital funds for Childline. For every Lindt TEDDY Milk and White chocolate (100g) purchased from Lindt chocolate shops, major grocery channels, retailers, and e-shops, including the NSPCC website, Lindt donated £1 to Childline. Raising £100,000, Lindt’s donation helped Childline to be there for children over the busy Christmas period.

Passionate about supporting the NSPCC, Lindt & Sprüngli UK has raised over £700,000 to date to support our vital work with children. Lindt also sponsored our annual ‘Merry Little Christmas’ concert for the third year running, held in the beautiful surroundings of Cadogan Hall, London on 27 November. This was an enchanting evening of carols, musical performances from well-known celebrities and special guests.

Lindt employees also generously donated chocolate hampers for Childline volunteers working over the Christmas holidays. These were gratefully received and kept morale high amongst the team at this very busy time of year. Not to mention Lindt’s ongoing support throughout the rest of the year, donating thousands of pounds’ worth of chocolate for use at our fundraising and engagement events and activities. This generosity adds fantastic value to our work across the calendar.

In Summer 2023 senior staff from Lindt’s UK office also took part in an invaluable piece of work with our corporate volunteering team which has contributed to the development of the NSPCC’s corporate volunteering strategy. 

We continue to be incredibly grateful for Lindt & Sprüngli’s ongoing generosity and commitment to our work. Thank you Lindt!

Lidl GB’s festive fundraising

This festive season Lidl GB had a selection of products in store, including Lidl’s renowned Christmas jumper, matching Christmas socks and hats, a beautiful bouquet, and festive Christmas Cards, with a donation from each sale going to the NSPC, raising a huge £200,000 in total.

Lidl supported both the NSPCC and the environment with their Christmas jumper rental initiative. Rather than buying a new jumper for the festivities, Lidl encouraged the public to hire their festive knitwear for just £2 a day, with all profits going to the NSPCC.

Despite the hustle and bustle of Christmas for Lidl colleagues, they still went to incredible efforts to fundraise throughout the Christmas period. Activities included bake sales, raffles and tombolas, the sale of Christmas gift bags and Christmas Eve plates (including mince pies and carrots), and visits from Father Christmas. All of Lidl’s fundraising supports Childline to be there for children when they are ready to open up about their mental health.

This Christmas, former East 17 Star Tony Mortimer re-recorded the 1994 hit ‘Stay another Day’ in a bid to help shoppers save more this Christmas. The new single “Save Another Way” was released to highlight the festive discounts up for grabs. To support the release, Lidl donated £100,000 to the NSPCC’s Childline service and customers who streamed the single were encouraged to donate to the NSPCC too.

Also, on 22 December, the longest night of the year, Lidl GB lit up the ’Lidl On Ice’ ice rink in NSPCC Green at Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland in support of NSPCC’s Walk for Children appeal.

Help to Buy Wales keep giving gifts this Christmas

We want to say a huge thank you to Help to Buy Wales (Part of the Development Bank of Wales) who have been kindly donating Christmas gifts to the NSPCC since 2018. This year they continued to bring joy to the children who use our services in our Cardiff Hub by donating another 50 gifts.

This generous donation and continued support means that despite the tough times these children have been through they were able to experience the true magic of receiving a gift from Santa.

Morgan Stanley’s warm winter gift

Morgan Stanley colleagues visited the NSPCC’s Together for Childhood service centre in Govan on 23 November, where they packed Winter Warmer Kits for children across Glasgow.

Volunteers helped us to make sure that at least 60 children had warm clothes, a cosy blanket, and some books and games to enjoy over the holidays.

Omaze raise more than £2 million for Speak out, Stay safe

We were thrilled to work with the fantastic team at Omaze a second time last year, having previously raised £1 million for Childline in 2021. We’re absolutely over the moon to have raised an incredible £2,160,000 for our Speak out Stay safe schools service. This phenomenal amount of money will support our aim of reaching every primary school in the UK, supporting us in reaching more than 700,000 children.

Our second campaign with Omaze ran from April to June last year and featured a stunning house in the Cotswolds worth £3,500,000. NSPCC supporter Will Satherley from Cardiff won the beautiful house, along with £100,000 in cash. When asked about his big win Will said, "When the team arrived I couldn’t comprehend that I’d actually won the Grand Prize, it was so surreal… it’s a life changing win for all our family.”

The 10-week campaign was fronted by NSPCC supporter Lemar, who featured in the TV adverts and promoted the campaign on social media. It was a real team effort to run this campaign effectively and we are very grateful to all our corporate partners who shared the draw among colleagues and networks.

Bell & Company complete their fourth and final Power of Four Challenge

The final Power of Four event took place from Wednesday 11 to Friday 13 October 2023, and saw team members run and ‘yomp’ four miles every four hours, for 48 hours through the streets of Belfast. Not a task for the faint hearted, but the whole team completed it in such high spirits! From the first Power of Four challenge, in 2020, to 2023, the team have covered an incredible 1680 miles to raise money for the NSPCC.

Everyone here at the NSPCC would like to say a huge thank you to Bell & Company, Sascha Cutura, and their teams for their dedication and support for Childline. Over the four years that Bell & Company have hosted the Power of Four event, they have raised over £69,000. This valuable fundraising helps us to continue our mission of keeping all children safe, making a significant impact to the service Childline volunteers provide for children and young people across Northern Ireland.

Every phone call that is made to Childline from a child or young person costs £4, meaning that through the teams hard work they have supported over 17,000 young people when they have needed the support of Childline the most.

Thank you, Bell & Company, for making such a positive impact and showing us all what working together can do!

The HFD Charitable Foundation raise money and awareness with a round of golf

The HFD Charitable Foundation have supported the NSPCC for nearly 15 years, and in that time have donated over £250,000 towards the Childline Glasgow base.

HFD Group is a family business, with a proud history of supporting communities in Glasgow and Lanarkshire to thrive through the work of the HFD Charitable Foundation.

This year their annual golf day had its most successful year to date, raising a total of £105,000 for local charities including NSPCC Scotland. As well as raising vital funds, the HFD Foundation’s annual golf day and Burns Supper events raise awareness of the NSPCC’s work in Scotland and inspire a wide range of local employers to take action for children and young people in their communities.

Most recently the HFD Foundation donated £25,000 towards the Childline night service, helping us to be there for vulnerable young people at a time when they feel most alone.

CALPOL®: Encouraging parents and carers to unbottle their worries and call Helpline

Helping parents decide if their child is ready to be Home or Out Alone with Blakemore Retail

Last July and August we saw a spike in contacts to the NSPCC’s Helpline from adults concerned about a child being left unsupervised. From April 2022 to March 2023 there were 11,428 contacts to the Helpline about neglect, where more than 40% directly mentioned concerns around a child being left home alone. These numbers tend to increase during the summer holidays, with 1,015 contacts to the Helpline about this issue over July and August 2022.

For working parents, July and August can be particularly difficult as they have to balance the competing pressures of work and childcare. For some, these challenges are likely to be even more acute this year with the cost-of-living crisis putting additional strain on family finances, forcing them to work even more hours.

With renewed support from Blakemore Retail, who own 262 SPAR stores across England and Wales, we ran our Home or Out Alone Campaign in summer 2023, helping parents decide when their child is ready to be left home alone, or be safe to go out on their own.

It was our most successful campaign to date, with the online quiz taken 145,000 times. Working together with Blakemore has helped us to support parents to keep children safe.

Read more about Home or Out Alone and take the quiz for yourself here.

We did it!

Passing the Online Safety Bill

After years of campaigning, we’ve done it. We can finally say the Online Safety Bill has been passed by Parliament and is now law! It means the internet will be safer for children and young people. Because of this law, websites and apps must now be built with children and young people’s safety in mind, and tech companies will have to legally protect them from harm.

Since 2018, when our Wild West Web campaign began, a lot has changed. We’ve grappled with changes to government, and government departments. We also had to make sure four different Prime Ministers made this Bill a priority, while working closely with different ministers, MPs and members of the House of Lords to make the Bill stronger for children. And crucially, we made sure the voices of young people and those who’ve been affected by online abuse were central to our campaigning. We made sure those in charge heard their experiences and what they thought needed to change.

Getting such an important piece of legislation passed was a complex challenge, to say the least. But thanks to all of our campaigning and supporters, a Duty of Care on tech companies to protect their child users is part of this new law. 

Throughout our campaign we heard from so many people who told us why a strong Bill needed to be passed, from our Young People’s Board for Change to those personally impacted by online abuse. 

One survivor, Louise*, who has campaigned with us, said: “My older abuser was able to gain access to me as a vulnerable 11-year-old girl, and was able to do so from the comfort of his own home in another country via the online world. The abuse lasted until I was 17.

“The effects of his emotional and sexual abuse cannot be overstated. I had become so beaten down and traumatised that I attempted suicide on two separate occasions. He robbed me of my teenage years and of the memories I was meant to have.

“It is of the utmost importance that children have voices, both governmental and otherwise, that champion their safety on the internet. Children have the right to be safe online, just as they have the right play safely in parks. We have a duty to protect children in all the spaces they exist.”

This is such an important moment, but our fight for a safe online world isn’t over. We will be watching to make sure tech companies take the necessary action to keep children safe from both current and emerging threats.

We want you to know that none of this incredible progress would’ve been possible without your support. You’ve helped us take one step closer to taming the Wild West Web. You’ve made a lasting difference to children’s lives.

My Child’s First Phone with Vodafone

In August, Vodafone announced it will be working with us as part of its ongoing commitment to keeping children safe online. The announcement coincided with the launch of a new campaign focused on a child’s first phone. Parents say choosing when to give a child their first mobile phone is one of the hardest decisions they have to make, with 36% saying it ranked equally as hard as choosing which school their children should go to.

We also know that it’s a time in a child’s life that can cause worry and uncertainty for both parents and children. Online harms are increasing in scale, prevalence and complexity, with 1 in 3 children having seen something ‘worrying or nasty online’ in the last 12 months (March 2022*)

Therefore, a key element of the work in our partnership is the ongoing development of a new online platform, designed to provide parents with practical resources for buying their child’s first phone, and how to support them in keeping their child safe online.

Last year there was a 10% increase in calls to the Helpline about mobile phones or online platforms in August, highlighting a spike in online safety concerns ahead of the new school term. The My Child’s First Phone campaign in August achieved over 50 national and regional press articles and 14 interviews, with a combined media reach of 2.9 million.

The range of support and guidance will continue to develop and grow, while we aim to combine children’s voices and experiences with our safeguarding expertise to empower and support families. Read more about how we’re working together here.

*www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/media-literacy-research/childrens/children-and-parents-media-use-and-attitudes-report-2022

Where did the idea for Building Connections come from?

A number of years ago our Director of Services, Claire Watt, visited Silver Line, a befriending service that Dame Esther Rantzen is also involved with (along with Childline), which prompted a number of conversations and discussions.

We then went on to do research with the University of Manchester and Durham University, reviewing Childline contacts around mental health, and one of the things they found was that they could see that children’s mental health ranged across a spectrum. On the lower end contacts talked to us about loneliness, and then, over time, those conversations progressed to them talking to us about more serious mental health needs, like anxiety and depression.

The Silver Line visit, and recommendations from that research, led us to think about providing a service, delivered using the befriending approach, that could support young people to stop loneliness progressing into much more serious mental health needs.

Tell us a bit about the process to get from an idea to launching the service

We came up with a seven-step model, delivered over 11 sessions, where the young person is paired with a befriender who takes them through the model via an online chat.

Last year we did an evaluation of the service, inviting some young people who are already talking to us about loneliness in Childline to join and test the viability of the service.

We found the young people built really helpful relationships where they were able to explore the challenges that they had with loneliness, work out ways to develop resilience to manage those thoughts and feelings, and make a plan as to how they continue to manage them after the sessions have ended.

We also engaged with quite a number of young people in the process of development, even on coming up with a name, and the way we communicate – we ran that by our Young People’s Board for Change. It’s been quite a big team effort, working across different teams, as well as listening to the needs that are out there from schools and other organisations that we work with, in particular to be able to shape what our criteria for young people who we will be inviting into the service will be.

So you mentioned talking to young people about the name, so how did the name come about? What’s the story behind Building Connections?

We came up with a seven-step model, delivered over 11 sessions, where the young person is paired with a befriender who takes them through the model via an online chat.

Last year we did an evaluation of the service, inviting some young people who are already talking to us about loneliness in Childline to join and test the viability of the service.

We found the young people built really helpful relationships where they were able to explore the challenges that they had with loneliness, work out ways to develop resilience to manage those thoughts and feelings, and make a plan as to how they continue to manage them after the sessions have ended.

We also engaged with quite a number of young people in the process of development, even on coming up with a name, and the way we communicate – we ran that by our Young People’s Board for Change. It’s been quite a big team effort, working across different teams, as well as listening to the needs that are out there from schools and other organisations that we work with, in particular to be able to shape what our criteria for young people who we will be inviting into the service will be.

How will Building Connections help us in achieving the goal of helping children feel safe, supported and listened to? What does it do differently to Childline?

What Building Connections does differently to Childline is that it uses a befriending approach. Unlike Childline, where a young person speaks to a different counsellor every time they come through, with Building Connections they speak to the same befriender over a period of time, and that allows them to learn how to build a relationship.

One of the things that we have learned from some of the young people who talk about loneliness is that they just don’t feel like they can build those relationships. They often withdraw into themselves. Even those who appear to be popular, and get on with everyone, can still be quite withdrawn and don’t always trust people.

The process of working with the same individual over time means they learn to trust that person, learn to share their vulnerabilities and the befriender engages with them on a personal level.

The way that we work within Building Connections is that we focus a lot more on the interests and personality of the young person, to encourage them, reassure them and support them to take some chances. We encourage them to – even though it feels uncomfortable, even though it feels like you might fail, – to try.

What are your hopes for the future of the service?

Personally, I would hope that we continue to deliver a service to the masses of young people out there who may be struggling with loneliness, supporting and equipping them to be able to make meaningful connections, to recognise that they deserve to have meaningful connections, and equipping them to be able to do that.

We want to help them to recognise that relationships start and end, and they can develop the resilience to cope with those feelings when relationships end and take whatever learning they need to from a relationship that has ended and use that to build new relationships.

Hollie’s story

Christmas is a time for family and friends, coming together and making memories. But a few years ago, it would have been impossible for me to have done that. As a child I was always very anxious and worried about everything but at the same time I was also very confident. Then at the age of 12 I was diagnosed with epilepsy which made my anxiety worse.

I had a good circle of friends but I didn’t tell them about my worries. Instead I would go in to school smiling, laughing and joking then go home, collapse and cry. Things got worse after a panic attack on a school trip. I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression and stopped seeing my friends - I just couldn’t tell them what was going on.

A few months later, I dropped out of school and shut myself off from the world. My mum had to quit work to look after me. Christmas was hard. It felt like everyone else was able to have fun and I was missing out. It’s supposed to be a happy time so when it wasn’t, it felt even more disappointing. Mum always tried hard to make it normal, but it was just not that easy.

I started having meltdowns where I would scream really loudly and bang my head against the wall or my knees. If my mum tried to stop me I would push her away, punch and kick her. I started pulling my hair out and I couldn’t deal with loud noises. Two school friends came to see me but when they left I had a massive meltdown. I didn’t see anyone else after that.

February 2014, at the age of 16, I was admitted to the Maudsley Hospital in London. I was there for six months. I stopped talking altogether and shut down completely.

The night before I was discharged I tried to take my own life. They put me in a secure room and I asked if I could have my phone. That was the first time I called Childline.

The counsellor started asking me about the things I like to do. I told her about my dog Boris, my friends and what I wanted to do when I was better. I told her I wanted to take my exams and go to university and do normal things like go on holiday. It really calmed me down and stopped me from trying again.

When I got home I still wasn’t talking or walking or doing anything for myself. I wouldn’t look at anyone and just sat with my head down. I was diagnosed with a rare syndrome called PAWS that explained my symptoms and went to stay in another mental health hospital. It really helped and I started eating again, but I still wouldn’t talk to anyone… except Childline.

When I returned home, I’d call regularly. I’d go to the bottom of the garden and speak to the counsellors about everything. One night I said I wanted to go back to hospital and they asked me why. It was then I realised I didn’t. I just wanted to be ok.

Childline gave me the confidence to write a note to my mum asking if I could see a counsellor. It was that counsellor who, after two and half years of silence, finally got me talking again. That wouldn’t have happened without Childline.

Life improved quickly and a month a later I told my mum I wanted to sit my GCSEs. After sitting my exams in 2017, I got mostly As and then the following year I did a Level 3 Diploma. Now I have a place at university – all of the things I told Childline I wanted to do. I even went on holiday with my friends – and of course Boris the dog is with me every day. He’s the best!

Today, I still take medication to manage my epilepsy and anxiety but life feels very very different. I feel optimistic about life and look forward to the future. I didn’t think life would ever feel like that.

If I hadn’t called Childline there is a chance I wouldn’t be here today and I would never have had another Christmas. Thank you.

Premier League: Play Safe

At the end of September, English football united again to promote the Play Safe campaign, led by the Football Association. Play Safe is a nationwide campaign that aims to focus attention on the vital importance of safeguarding across the national game. This year it was promoted and activated across every level of English football, from professional topflight leagues to the grassroots game. This year’s weekend focused on the safeguarding role that everyone must play to keep children and young people safe, no matter where or how they play.

This season, the Premier League again funded Childline across the weekend, enabling young people up to 19 years old to access free and confidential support either online or by calling to speak to a trained counsellor. The Premier League and the NSPCC have been working in partnership over the past three seasons to help provide children and young people involved in academy football or League-funded community programmes with positive football experiences.

Thanks to the Premier League support, volunteer counsellors were there for 550 children who bravely turned to Childline for help during this weekend. Premier League captains also wore Play Safe armbands over the weekend, helping to raise awareness of the role everyone can play when it comes to safeguarding.

Thank you to the Premier League for supporting the campaign again this year and ensuring Childline is available for any child that needs it.

We're so proud of, and grateful for, our community of corporate partners. We appreciate how hard you work to raise money, volunteer your time, and support our vital services and campaigns. With partners like you, together we can end child abuse and neglect.

Credits:

NSPCC photography by Tom Hull, except in Hollie’s story where photography is provided by Hollie. All children and adults in NSPCC photography are models or volunteers. Other images courtesy of our corporate partners.