Children’s experiences texting with a child helpline

ABSTRACT

We explore how children experienced texting with a child helpline, based on 724 qualitative responses representing 586 individual SMS counselling sessions. The data were collected through a questionnaire distributed immediately after receiving counselling and two weeks later. The children expressed the importance of feeling listened to and accepted by the counsellor, gaining new perspectives or developing a plan of action. They also emphasised the importance of the counsellors being sensitive to their readiness for change by providing advice and directives when needed and a listening ear when that was preferred. Only a few comments concerned the medium of texting itself, indicating that the sense of psychological closeness can move the technology to the background and outside one’s awareness.

KEYWORDS:

• Texting
• SMS
• mediated counselling
• child helpline
• youth

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Torben Bechmann Jensen is Associate Professor of Social Psychology and Head of Studies at the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research focuses on youth, health, prostitution, marginalisation, smoking, counselling, migration, education, and group behaviour.

Trine Natasja Sindahl is a PhD student in the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She has worked, supervised and conducted research and development projects in the area of mediated counselling since 1995.

Jasmin Wistoft has an MSc in psychology from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and is a former counsellor at the Danish child helpline (Børns Vilkår).

ORCID

Torben Bechmann Jensen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1441-1591

Trine Natasja Sindahl http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5008-6581

Notes

1 Registered sessions from the helpline documentation system.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by TrygFonden and Innovation Fund Denmark [grant number 4135-00101B].