• TRUSTBOARD REPORTS •

CHILD HELPLINE CHAIRPERSON'S REPORT 2006
It is my pleasure to report on the Child Helpline Trust for the past year. It has very much been a steady-as-she-goes year that featured increased call numbers and rebuilding of our volunteer base. We are still getting more calls to our Helpline for preventative issues, but this year showed many more referrals to CYF, plus many more bullying calls. It is a sign of the times that we have been receiving enquiries and requests for help from other countries through our website. These have come from UK, Ireland, Canada, USA & Australia. It is interesting to note that similar problems are faced by children, youth & families throughout the western world. On behalf of the Trust Board I would like to thank our volunteers for their dedication and commitment. I would also like to thank Anne Carroll and Robyn Dawson for their work over the past three years training and supervising our counsellors. I welcome Jonathon Loan to this role and hope he enjoys passing on counselling skills to a new generation of counsellors. Training volunteer counsellors increases the skills of those trained, who often go on to a career in related fields.

FUNDRAISING: Fundraising is one of the many external things that we cannot control and we are grateful to all Trusts and individuals that have donated towards our service operations. I’d like to thank three of these for their consistent contribution over the past six years; The Canterbury Community Trust, the Your Day Trust and the Canterbury Foundation. I’d also like to mention Markat Promotions for the fundraising campaign that is providing regular monthly revenue. Thank you for your sterling fundraising effort this year. We do need to be constantly finding new sources of funding, to restore our reserves to carry us over lean periods.

RUNNING COSTS: We are sometimes asked how we justify the cost of running a Helpline. It was suggested that at the cost of $90,000 to run a Helpline that took 1000 calls p.a., this worked out at about $90 per call. Such over-simplification of expenditure per call does not allow for fixed costs and a host of other relevant data, but does ask rightly for justification of our service.

While there is ample evidence that Helplines do make a difference (as shown in many recent studies), the most relevant example would be intervention in youth suicide attempts. If just one person was stopped from committing suicide, and based on the average income being $38,000 p.a., that person’s expected income over forty years is about $1.5m. As wages make up between 15% & 25% of the cost of producing goods & services, the average contribution of each person to the NZ economy over forty years is about $6m (based on today’s average figures). That means that as Child Helpline intervened in 13 suicide attempts last year, our contribution towards NZ future economy totals about $78m; not a bad return on the mere $90,000 it costs to run our service.

SERVICE CONTRACTS: We welcome the change of our Service Contractor to the Ministry of Social Development’s Family & Community Services. Their Contract is much appreciated, as is the continuation of the Organisational Standards Review. This allows us, as a Trust Board, to be sure of our transparency and accountability. We welcome the introduction of the Charities Commission, which should ensure these standards are consistently applied.

PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL: Thank you Darlene Mathieson for your work, especially on the Promotions Material review, the redesign of our logo, on-going work with the poster and bookmark redesign, and the imminent new website. This work helps immeasurably in the constant task of providing assistance to the most vulnerable group in our society, our children, by letting them know there is a place they can go for help. Regrettably, this year has yet again shown how prevalent abuse is among sections of NZ society, how much education and training is needed, and how valuable services like ours are. Every intervention made is a life saved.

THANK YOU: Finally, I would like to thank all the people I have worked with at Child Helpline; counsellors, Board, paid Staff and the people behind the scenes, our lawyer, Jeff Kenny, auditor, Greta Vink, and patron, Tim Barnett.

Anne Stubbersfield
Chairperson
CHILD HELPLINE TRUST