Contacting Childline for the first time

Our Counsellors are trained and experienced at supporting young people who are contacting Childline for the first time. They can help if you are feeling worried or anxious. It can feel hard to make that first step, but you deserve to be supported and to feel safe and happy.

Share your feelings

It can be hard to know what to say to a counsellor and painful to share what’s happening. A good way to start is by sharing how you’re feeling. This could be saying that ‘I’m feeling worried about talking to you’ or ‘I don’t know how to tell you what I want to say.’

The counsellor can then support you with these feelings and help you.

You don’t have to share everything

You can share as little or as much as you like. It might be that you only want to share a little bit about how you’re feeling, then in future sessions you can share a bit more about what’s been happening.

You’re in charge

Our counsellors are here to support you in the way that’s best for you. Before you have a counselling session with Childline, think about what you would like to get from the session. You can also think about what you would like to focus on. You can then share that with your counsellor at the beginning.

If a counsellor asks you a question that you don’t want to answer it’s absolutely fine for you to tell them that. There's no pressure on you in any of your counselling sessions to talk about anything you are uncomfortable talking about.

You can leave whenever you want

Our counsellors understand that there are reasons why you may have to leave really suddenly and this is always fine

You can also choose to leave if you feel like you’ve covered enough for that particular session. You can always come back and speak to Childline again another time.

Updated 15th April 2021