Online chat

Want to chat to a counsellor? Here's how it works

Enter the waiting room

We will be with you to start your chat as soon as we can
Chill out while you wait

You can watch videos and play games while you wait
Start chatting to a counsellor

Chat with a counsellor about what's worrying you (This works like instant messenger)
Makes sense? Let's go

What kind of person or people will I chat to?

ChildLine counsellors are trained volunteers who all have experience of listening and talking to children and young people.

A ChildLine counsellor is someone:

• who will listen to you and knows it takes courage to contact us
• who you can trust
• who won't judge you or put you down
• who is not easily shocked
• who is aware of the sorts of problems you might be worried about
• who is supported when they chat by a ChildLine Supervisor

After your 1-2-1 chat

At the end of your chat, remember to close your internet browser down so no one will see what you have been looking at. If you want to keep browsing the ChildLine site then you can do this by returning to the homepage.

Is ChildLine confidential?

Confidentiality means not telling anyone else about what you’ve said. We always want to keep calls to ChildLine confidential, which means you can feel safe talking to us, knowing that no one else will find out.

If you tell us something that makes us very worried about your safety or makes us think that your life, or the life of someone else is in danger, we will talk to you about whether other people need to know. ChildLine will only take action in an emergency.

Find out more about confidentiality.

Opening hours

ChildLine is open 24-hours a day, 7 days a week for online 1-2-1 chat.

Our counsellors

36% of our counsellors are guitar heroes

Privacy and advice: About Childline; confidentiality promise; Cover your tracks

Accessibility

We want to make sure everyone can access the information provided on this site

We've put together a few tips and help for you. Please send us a message if you can't find what you're looking for. Or you have a suggestion of something we could include.

Using the keyboard instead of the mouse
As well as using the tab key to navigate through the screen, the ChildLine website has special access keys:

Alt+S = skip navigation
Alt+1 = home
Alt+0 = accessibility information.

Is the text size too large or too small?
You can change your text settings through your browser options:

In Internet Explorer, go to View > Text size and select your desired text size setting (eg, larger, smaller).

In Firefox, go to View > Text size and increase/decrease using Ctrl and + or -

If you have a scroll wheel on your mouse, you can hold down Ctrl and scroll back or forth to increase or decrease the font size in both IE and Firefox.

Changing your computer screen settings
To change the size of the image shown on your screen on a PC running Windows 95 and upwards, go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Display > Settings and change the desktop area by using the sliding bar.

On an Apple Mac, you can use the Monitor & Sound Control Panel to change the resolution.

Having difficulty with your keyboard or mouse?
You can fine-tune your mouse and keyboard settings under Start > Settings > Control Panel > Accessibility in Windows 95/98/NT/2000 and XP.

Skipping navigation for talking browsers and screen readers
For speech browsers, you can press Alt and S followed by Enter to skip navigation on our pages.

The site is W3C level A compliant.