The Presentation Of Child Abuse And Neglect by Children And Young People: The What's Up Experience

Author

Grant Taylor

Presenter

Jan Fulford

Organisation

The Kids Help Foundation Trust, Auckland

What's Up is a professional telephone counselling service that has been available free of charge to all New Zealand children and young people aged between 5 and 18 years since September 2001. What's Up is available between noon and midnight, seven days a week and receives an average of 1,500 calls every day from an estimated 22,000 individuals each year. Non-identifying information is collected on all calls received. Because calls to What's Up can be made anonymously and confidentially and are always initiated by children and young people themselves, they provide a picture of child abuse from the child's point-of-view. This is an important perspective on child abuse that may differ from that arising from circumstances where adults identify a situation as being abusive towards a child or young person. Approximately 1.7% of the problems presented to What's Up are classified as involving child abuse or neglect. This paper presents data on 1,513 such calls analysed by age, gender, ethnicity, family circumstances, geographical location and outcome. Qualitative data on the nature of the abuse reported in these calls is also presented.

Format

Poster

Biography

Grant Taylor is a clinical psychologist who has worked for 26 years as a clinician and researcher in a variety of settings in the physical and mental health domain, both in the New Zealand public health system and private practice. In 2001 he left full-time clinical practice to set up What's Up, a new telephone counselling service for children and young people in New Zealand, modelled on Australia's Kids Help Line. He continues as Executive Director of The Kids Help Foundation Trust, which runs What's Up.