We chat to Team Leader Lesley Butler.
What is your role at Barnardos?
I am the Team Leader for 0800 What’s Up, our counselling helpline and web–chat service for tamariki and rangatahi across Aotearoa. I manage 21 part-time supervisors and counsellors.
How long have you been part of the Barnardos whanau and what makes it a special place to work?
0800 What’s Up is now 20 years old and I was one of their first telephone counsellors. I love the philosophy and approach to counselling that we use at 0800 What’s Up. We’re an early intervention response to children and young people’s mental health. Having a free, open service which allows children to reach out and talk about whatever is bothering them is very important.
Our aim is to empower tamariki and rangatahi to make their own choices by guiding them through a constructive thought and decision-making process, rather than instructing them on what to do. This helps our children to build the mental and emotional resilience they need to tackle the challenges they will face as they move through their teens and into adulthood.
It’s fantastic to be able to connect 0800 What’s Up across other Barnardos services – such as the follow-up calls we’ve recently started making to children and young people participating in our Footsteps to Feeling Safe programme, providing additional support for those who have experienced family violence.
What drew you to this work originally?
When my two boys came along, I was at a bit of a loss as to how to communicate with them. I grew up with three sisters, no brothers, attended an all-girls school and my father seemed to play golf all weekend. I wanted to know how to talk to my boys, and what issues they would be facing as they grew up. I completed a Child and Adolescent Diploma which included some counselling papers around the same time that 0800 What’s Up was being launched.
This year we also reached a great milestone, 0800 What’s Up has been operating for 20 years and has helped so many tamariki and rangatahi through the 1.6 million answered calls and 10,000 chats. I feel privileged to have been here for that journey and to have witnessed the changes to how we deliver the service, and most recently welcoming Kidsline to join 0800 What’s Up, so that we can reach more children.
Lesley Butler – Team Leader
0800 What’s Up?
Through your work, what do you see as the current challenges facing tamariki and rangatahi in Aotearoa?
The tamariki and rangatahi who contact 0800 What’s Up provide us with valuable insights and first-hand knowledge of the challenges they have identified and are experiencing.
Covid-19 has impacted hugely on children, young people and their families worldwide and New Zealand has not been spared from this. We have seen this reflected in many of the calls and chats since March 2020.
Children and young people talk about the pressures at home and the impact Covid-19 has had on their families through lockdowns. They talk about the uncertainty of the future.
We hear how our children and young people are navigating individual relationships with members of their family. Some talk about the positive effects of families spending more time together but more often their experience is feelings of disconnection and isolation.
They talk about the pressure they feel to keep up with their school work and how hard it can be to remain motivated when not surrounded by friends and peers. Many of these issues – relationships, isolation, school pressure – are ones that children and young people have always struggled with, but which have new challenges because of the pandemic.
What is the biggest change you have seen in recent years?
We have seen a change in the way that children and young people choose to engage with 0800 What’s Up. We offer both online chat and phone counselling. We have noticed a growing preference for using online chat particularly in the last couple of years. We are also seeing that mental health and other more complex issues are most often talked about through the online chat service. Young people tell us that they feel comfortable talking through chat as it offers more privacy than talking on a phone.
What, for you, are some of the highlights from the last year?
Receiving feedback, hearing from children or young people who have contacted us to let us know how we helped them is always incredibly rewarding.
And I’m super proud of my team and their ability to adapt how we deliver 0800 What’s Up. We haven’t missed a single day of service during all the lockdowns and fluctuating alert levels. As an essential service that has traditionally worked in our call centre in Auckland we have all had to be flexible and adjust to new ways of working. The way the team has risen to the challenge has been inspiring.
This year we also reached a great milestone, 0800 What’s Up has been operating for 20 years and has helped so many tamariki and rangatahi through the 1.6 million answered calls and 10,000 chats. I feel privileged to have been here for that journey and to have witnessed the changes to how we deliver the service, and most recently welcoming Kidsline to join 0800 What’s Up, so that we can reach more children.
This article was originally featured in the Impact magazine, click here to view the magazine online.