On November 18, a hotline for boarding school pupils and alumni was opened in Ukraine. Children throughout the country can turn with their worries to 8-800-500-2180 every day from 3 to 8 p.m. using any phone capable of intercity communication. If you call from a public phone, you have to pay only for the first couple of minutes while connecting to the hotline, after which the connection is free. At present, because of the lack of free digital phone numbers in the region where phone consultants work, only two people can call the hotline simultaneously.
The consultants went through special training and are prepared to give consultations on legal, psychological, and everyday problems, emergency psychotherapeutic aid, and information on the specialized aid services. Today their team consists of 23 members. Both the psychologists and sociologists have higher education and are experienced in giving assistance to children with special needs. Children invited to the project presentation told The Day that they like this idea very much because sometimes it is much easier to discuss your problem with a stranger than with a person who knows you personally. Specialists believe that during a telephone conversation a child has a chance to create for him/herself an image of an ideal, in his view, grownup interlocutor. In addition, when speaking over the phone, a joungster can easily share his/her painful problems and be confident that nobody will make fun of him or use the information against him; he/she does not need to conceal his weaknesses, fears, or mistakes. Telephone conversation makes it possible to keep emotional contact under complete anonymity, and it is available even at long distance.
So far the hotline works in an experimental mode under the support of UNICEF and is technically supplied by the Utel Corporation. General implementation of the project is provided by Ukraine’s State Committee on Family and Youth and the State Institute for Family and Youth Affairs. In 2003, the state plans to undertake financing the children’s hotline and broaden the category of children to whom such assistance will be available. It is worth mention that creating such a hotline does not mean solving problems for a young person. Its goal is to present at children’s service all the experience grownups can share by a phone line and to help him or her find the inner resources to solve his/her own problems.
