WHEN the Civic Society reconvened for 2008 Colin Butler, chairman of Malvern and Three Counties Friends of Childline provided a most interesting talk called Helping Children At Risk. The annual meeting was also held.

Mr Butler spoke about Childline, which is an independent charity that provides emergency protection for young people up the age of 19 and is free and confidential. The main reasons for calling the helpline are bullying, family tension and physical abuse, but other reasons include sexual abuse, Aids, alcohol, bereavement, cultural religious and family issues, disability, depression and domestic violence.

Mr Butler took us through the history of child protection, briefly explaining the original roles of the NSPCC, Barnardo's and social services. This showed that although there was a statutory framework in the past, the weakness of the system was that children had no direct access to help. This all changed in 1986 when Esther Rantzen ran a BBC That's Life survey about child abuse. When she invited adult survivors to reply, there were 5,000 responses. The results were analysed to see what could be done to improve children's lives and, as a result, Esther's idea was to set up a free helpline for children. In October 1986 a Childwatch programme launched Childline, which gained 50,000 attempted calls on the first night.

In January, 2006 Childline merged with the NSPCC, which has helped with economies of scale.

Mr Butler explained more about the current capacity and capability of the organisation and told us about a number of other activities they run in order to help and educate the community about its work. Childline in Partnership, alias CHIPS, was launched in 1998 as an outreach programme to give awareness training so as to establish programmes in school to provide peer support or anti-bullying action. Other services include the Line, which exists for any young person living away from home, and Textphone for children with hearing or speech impediments.

The Civic Society annual meeting saw the election of officers with a vote having to be taken for the remaining committee places. The healthy position of the society both financially and in terms of increased membership was confirmed. President George Chesterton expressed gratitude to all committee members and others involved in supporting activities and in particular to chairman John Handley who was re-elected for a further year.

John Handley reminded us that, as we approach our 50th anniversary in 2009, we will want to mark this occasion.

DENISE PRESTON