CHIQUAL - Child Helplines, Quality, Data and Advocacy

ongoing

Child Helpline International is one of the largest collective impact membership organisations with 166 members from 139 countries and territories around the world, and 30 members in 27 EU member states. Child helplines provide easily accessible psycho-social support, intervention and referral for children to protect and promote children’s rights. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the workload of child helplines increased significantly, and their essential role in children's rights and child protection in their national contexts became clear. When other services had to close or operated under restricted circumstances, children could rely on child helplines for support, guidance and referral. Furthermore, child helplines became further recognised as a source of reliable data for children's right's policy-making. However, the increased workload for child helplines and increased interest in the value of their services suggests a need for regionally established quality frameworks, as well as capacity-building in data management. Furthermore, many of our EU members simply do not have all the resources required to do the work they want to do for children in their countries and beyond. In this Framework Partnership agreement, we want to protect and promote children's rights by 1) increasing the capacity of member child helplines to respond to children by further implementing Core Quality Standards and subsequent learning opportunities for child helplines; 2) increasing availability of strong evidence on issues facing children to influence children’s rights policy and practice by improving the reliability, comparability and access to child helpline data; and 3) raise awareness of policymakers, children’s rights partners and the general public on issues facing children; the importance of child helplines; and the existence of child helplines, through regional advocacy and through capacity-building on national level advocacy.