Mr. John Church:

Traditionally, Childline has been known for its phone line, before our online services began. Over the years, as children changed, Childline introduced new online services as well. Like Barnardos, we have traditionally done face-to-face interventions as well. These are predominantly funded by, and individuals are predominantly referred through, Tusla. Two years ago, we undertook a strategic review. We wanted to bring our resilience-based service to more children. We asked ourselves how we should do that and what was the best way to ensure increased reach as we scaled up our services. We came to the conclusion that scaling up our face-to-face business or supports would result in a significant expense relative to what we could achieve through online or e-therapeutic supports.

We wanted to look at what type of typical interventions that would mean. As a lot of work is being done in the UK, Scandinavia and Australia on this, we looked at what others are doing. Then suddenly Covid hit and we were forced into a live pilot, which was a blessing in disguise, in that the 450 children who we would normally see face to face were forced to go through the same programme online through a video call. At present, we do a video call but we also have a service called SilverCloud, which is a cognitive behaviour therapy, CBT, based online intervention. That is a pilot and is being funded by the HSE. The HSE is looking at this as an intervention for children. It is already there for adults. Some 70 children have been referred off the CAMHS waiting list, and we intervene. It is a self-assessed six-week programme but we know when a child has dropped off so we intervene. We talk to the child and ask if there is any way we can help the child to keep on the programme. Then we talk-----