ANAR receives an average of one thousand calls a day
The ANAR phone of Help to Children and Adolescents was launched in 1994 and, since then, "has not stopped ringing". So much so, that this NGO dedicated to helping children and adolescents in any type of risk receives an average of one thousand calls a day, mainly of children who suffer some type of violence.
As explained earlier this month, the program director of the ANAR Foundation, Benjamín Ballesteros Barrado, since the start-up of the telephone have been received more than 3.5 million calls, of which 360,000 requests for help were in 2014.
Help phone for children at risk
The main reasons that have led Spanish children to mark andl 900 20 20 10, which leaves no trace on the invoice, have been the psychological abuse (10-15 percent of calls) and cases of sexual abuse (six percent), a percentage that remains constant and has not improved over the years.
Ballesteros, who pitied the Health and Social Services Commission in the Senate, explained that in 2014 there were about 2,000 calls for gender violence, of which more than 200 were from minors who received bad treatment of your partner.
But not only that, nine percent of the calls received have been cases of violence by young people towards their parents. For example, Ballesteros cited the case of a mother who was calling because her son had beaten her.
New technologies and self-harm
The representative of ANAR also reported cases of violence arising from the use of new technologies, such as bullying, sexting (sharing photos of a sexual nature through a mobile phone) or grooming (when an adult tries to establish relationships with a minor through the Internet).
On the other hand, he also warned of a problem that is increasing: self-harm According to him, in 2014 they received 176 calls from young people who hurt themselves to alleviate the psychological tension of their problems.
Faced with this situation, the NGO plans to launch another way of communicating with minors: a chat or messaging application so that young people can contact them even more easily.
Angela R. Bonachera
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