THE number of children calling ChildLine to confide in a counsellor about their parents' drinking and drug abuse has doubled in the past year.
The 24-hour helpline received 5323 calls - more than 100 a week - from children scared by their parents' behaviour, a staggering rise on the 2509 calls it fielded the year before. Just under 1000 counselling sessions (956) were carried out by staff based at centres in Glasgow and Aberdeen.
Most of the children turning to the NSPCC-run service were between the ages of 12 and 15, but a substantial minority - one in 10 - were aged 11 or under and still at primary school.
In a stark warning, the charity said thousands of children live in fear of their parents' anger, with one in six saying they had fallen victim to physical violence by their mum or dad when they were under the influence.
Many children are being forced to live in dirty and even dangerous surroundings and lack many essentials including having enough to eat and clean clothes to wear because household money is spent on booze, the charity warned.
Tom Rahilly, head of services for families that are affected by alcohol and drugs at the NSPCC, said: "What we hear from children is that they are concerned that their parents are using drugs or alcohol to blot out worries about jobs, money or housing."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article