Mr. John Church:

I thank the Chairman and members of the sub-committee for inviting the ISPCC to be here today to discuss the impact of Covid-19 on the mental health of children. I will be pleased to address any questions members might have as the session proceeds.

Through our Childline services, children tell us first-hand about the experiences of their daily lives. In our operational year of October 2019 to September 2020, our listening service answered more than 240,000 contacts from children and young people.

Our therapeutic support service, which works with children and families on a one-to-one basis for up to six months, worked with 458 children. The mental health impact of Covid-19 featured heavily across these services.

When restrictions were first introduced in Ireland, children were among the first to be impacted. Cut off from school and from extended members, friends and the sports and activities which can play a vital role in their lives, they reached out to Childline for support. In the first week of school closures, Childline experienced an instant increase in demand across its online, phone and text-based services. While demand for our phone and text services were sustained thereafter, children continued to seek support in increasing numbers online. It may have felt as though their conversation could be overheard at home.

In the initial period of the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, our listening services saw an increase in contacts around mental and emotional well-being, suicide and self-harm. Many children told us how their feelings of anxiety stemmed from every aspect of their lives. They picked up on what their parents were going through and what was being reflected through the news and on social media. Tensions which had been simmering under the surface in homes arose and in some cases children experienced adverse childhood experiences for the first time.

Between the closure of schools in March 2020 and the usual end of the primary school term in late June of that year, the Childline website experienced an increase in users of over 100%. Between March 2020 and July 2020 our listening services answered over 2,500 contacts from children seeking support around their mental and emotional well-being and, in addition, we answered over 600 contacts from children who spoke with us about suicide. The impact of intense Covid-19 restrictions reintroduced in December 2020 was felt acutely by children around Christmas time. They spoke with us about issues including loss, anxiety and suicide ideation. One call was received from a young girl who was living in care but felt that nobody was thinking about her. While her challenges have begun long before the global pandemic struck, the sense of isolation, fear and anxiety which had stirred up inside her over the months of tight restrictions had brought her to a place where she felt she could not go on and that she urgently needed to talk.

Since October 2020 the Childline listening service has answered over 5,500 contacts in total from children seeking support around their mental and emotional well-being. They tell us how they feel anxious, unhappy, lonely and more.

The Childline therapeutic service, which offers more directed therapeutic support to children, young people and their families, is now seeing significant stress and anxiety around school and peer interactions. Children have become more withdrawn. They are out of the mode of socialising and perhaps they have changed too and they are not quite sure where they fit in any more. There are increased levels of anxiety, with more children feeling as though they cannot leave their bedroom or their house and as though they cannot go back to school or to the so-called normal.

Our E-therapeutic support model now allows us to support these children and young people online. The model of E-therapeutic support allows us to engage with young people online, offering the same levels of therapeutic interventions as our face-to-face sessions, with a focus on goal orientation to match the young person’s strengths and needs at the time of our work together.

We were fortunate during Covid-19 to have our E-therapeutic support programme evaluated through a pilot review and the results confirmed that where a young person wishes to engage therapeutically online, the impact of this work matches that of a face-to-face engagement. We are confident from the evaluation of the pilot that we have a robust proof of concept that highlights the potential in this service model and the role such a model can play in supporting children and young people post Covid-19.

Mental well-being and anxiety continue to be among the topics spoken about most frequently by those who turn to our services for support. In the years since October 2020 we have answered around 26 contacts each week from children and young people who tell us they feel actively suicidal, have suicidal thoughts and feelings, or have previously attempted suicide. In that same period, we have answered 923 contacts from young people speaking about self-harm. We anticipate that children will continue to experience acute challenges related to the impact of Covid-19 on their mental health for some time to come. We must ensure that they have access to the supports they need, when they need them.

I thank the members for their attention and I look forward to engaging with them.