It is one of my favourite times of the year as a charity, Volunteers Week.

Each year it affords us the opportunity to say thank you to all our amazing volunteers, those who help deliver our Speak out. Stay safe school assemblies for example, those who help deliver counselling sessions at our Yorkshire Childline base and those dedicated fundraisers who take on the most physical, wacky or fun challenges, organise coffee mornings or glamorous balls to help us in our work to end child abuse and neglect once and for all.

Volunteers Week lets us celebrate but also promote how great volunteering can be. Not just the invaluable help, manpower and funds it provides for us as a charity but for the volunteers too. I speak to countless volunteers who talk about the social side of volunteering, how it has allowed them to meet new people, remain active and for some it has helped bolster their career experience. For whatever reason people may volunteer, their dedication and enthusiasm for their communities makes me extraordinarily proud.

This year Volunteers Week is especially poignant, so many people have stepped up to do all they can to help the NSPCC and Childline still be here for children during the current pandemic, for whom, in lockdown, home isn’t always the safest place. Sadly, abuse and neglect don’t stop simply because our normal lives have had to stop. In fact, these unprecedented times mean for some families, struggling with finances, mental well-being, home schooling etc home becomes a pressure pot. For many young people, the difficult circumstances they were already facing, which can include abuse, domestic violence and difficult family relationships, have been exacerbated during lockdown, leaving them feeling alone and trapped.

Childline and its volunteer counsellors have adapted very quickly to be able to support children during the pandemic. This has included Childline staff and volunteers being recognised as critical workers, providing technology to enable some to work from home and making some important changes to the Childline website to provide additional support to children and young people. In Leeds, at our Yorkshire Childline base, our amazing volunteers have put the service before themselves, still travelling in as key workers to ensure that the children who contact us, worried for themselves or for loved ones have someone to share their concerns with. Since January, Childline has delivered 6,938 counselling sessions to children and young people who have got in touch about coronavirus. On top of the Covid-19 concerns, every week since lockdown our staff and volunteers have delivered more than 2,000 counselling sessions with children concerned about their mental health and emotional wellbeing – totalling nearly 17,000 over 7 weeks. 

Our volunteers have been there for children, children like one 12-year-old boy who told us: “I am scared about the coronavirus. I get really anxious that my family and I might get it as a lot of people have died from it already.  I'm worried about my mum because she's pregnant and I'm scared something will happen to her and the baby. It's really scary because everyone is talking about it and people are sharing stories every day on social media. I don't know how to cope."

The dedication of our Childline volunteers means that children no longer need to feel alone, together we can build resilience and even when needed provide safety for a child at risk.

So, thank you to all our volunteers, for what you continue to do now despite every adversity and indeed for what you have done in the past. Thanks to you, countless children’s lives have been transformed, you have helped provide hope where there was none and helped create a legacy to be proud of. For those of you who are reading this, who would like to help too, we launched an urgent appeal ‘Still here for children’ so that the work to protect all children can go on when our usual fundraising activities have had to be curtailed. Please do visit our website to find out how you can donate, £10 or whatever you can afford, to help fund vital services like Childline, so we can continue to be here for children who need help.