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Summary: Before the European Consultation for child helpline in Hungary CHI held a pre-consultation meeting for the so-called scale up countries. This one day meeting, with participants from Albania, Azerbaijan, Macedonia, Romania, Russia and Serbia, looked at progress since the CEE/CIS consultation in Croatia in 2004 and discussed next steps for 2006.
The European Consultation (9-11 February) with participants from 28 of the 35 member helplines started with an opening ceremony with the Minister of Family and Social Affairs in Hungary. The opening ceremony was followed bya session on helpline issues. Misuse of helplines was the topic selected by most helplines as a challenge and volunteers had been called in to simulate prank calls to demonstrate how problematic they can be. The countries were then divided into 3 groups to discuss this further and come up with ideas on how to better cope with this phenomenon. Challenges related to misuse of helplines were that they are de-motivating for staff and they might prevent children who need help to get through. On the other hand, helplines do not like to label the prank calls as misuse since many of them are testing calls by children in order to build up trust. Possible coping mechanisms were to train counsellors in dealing with prank calls, give counsellors a chance to talk about their frustrations in supervision and see these prank calls as calls which every helpline receives. In most extreme cases of repeated misuse of the helpline, some helplines block callers of access for a certain period. Finally, it was decided that the phenomenon of prank calls should be properly researched. A taskforce of helplines put down a framework for the academic research which would look at the philosophy of helplines in relation to prank calls, definition of terms, describe different methods/responses/practices and management decisions. Day 2 started with a session on fundraising. First an external consultant gave an in-depth step-by-step presentation on how to develop a strategic framework for fundraising, then another external consultant gave a presentation on different fundraising methods. After the 2 presentations, the countries were divided into 3 groups to discuss best fundraising practices and lessons learned from the 2 sessions. The second part of day 2 was chaired by Professor Ernesto Caffo from the Italian helpline. The panel with representatives from the Belgium and Irish helplines and the International Telecom Union (ITU), discussed how to use the EU Written Declaration for advocacy and a common 3-digit number for all European helplines. A task force consisting of Child Focus and representatives from helplines in Italy, Greece and the UK will submit a recommendation to ITU by April this year to make all helplines toll-free for the callers, toll-free for the helplines and start deliberating on a 3-digit number for all helplines in Europe. The final day started with a presentation on how to fill in the PSP check-list online. At the same time CHI presented the newly set-up online library and explained how it has been categorised according to PSP. The helplines agreed to send all relevant documents to us in electronic versions as well as hard copies. Following PSP was a short session on the data proforma sheet, trying to explain the different categories and encouraging helplines to fill it in. Discussions followed on whether or not the helplines should fill in 2004 and 2005 data at the same time (in case the online database has not been finalised by the summer), but most agreed that it was better to fill in twice. BRIS (Sweden) also took the opportunity to inform participants about the upcoming International Consultation scheduled for 30 September – 4 October in Stockholm, Sweden this year. Just before the closing remarks, CHI had a session on Child Participation, a newly initiated project aiming to put child helplines in the forefront when it comes to involving children and making their views known. The project has 3 phases; phase 1 aims to reflect on current practices, phase 2 will be a mid-term review of findings from questionnaire handed out at regional consultation and a pilot of best practices in 6 or more countries; phase 3 will be a presentation of baseline findings and pilots at the international consultation in Sweden. Finally, a number of helplines decided to do a twinning visit for 2006. Albania will twin with Italy, Romania will twin with Hungary, Azerbaijan will twin with Germany or Austria and Macedonia plans to twin with Ireland. Twinning is the process of bringing two child helplines together to share experiences and know how. This has proved an extremely successful strategy for strengthening existing helplines and getting a new helpline through the start up period. Key objectives: · To provide support and training for organisations wishing to establish a helpline · To provide support and training for developing helplines At the closing session, the chair of the CHI board, Ms. Valerie Howarth gave all the CHI member helplines a membership certificate.