$29
It costs $29 (on average) to directly answer a phone call or a webchat and provide a counselling session.
About us
What’s Up is run by Barnardos Aotearoa. We’re a free, nationally available counselling helpline and webchat service for tamariki and rangatahi aged 5 to 19 years old, giving them someone to talk to when they need, as often as they need. What’s Up is confidential and available seven days a week, from 11am to 11pm. It’s the only dedicated helpline of its kind in Aotearoa.
Since 2001 our counsellors have been helping young people to navigate challenges in their life and improve their wellbeing, equipping them with the tools and strategies they need to deal with tough situations now and in the future.
From 2021
Our counsellors have answered 1.6m calls and 29000 web chats.
Young people call us for many reasons. The top five reasons are:
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Mental Health – callers regularly tell about their concerns for their own or someone else’s mental health. Topics included anxiety, feeling down or depressed, self-harm, being clinically diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder and medication.
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Family relationships – callers talk to us about issues with their caregivers and siblings, extended family and whānau.
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Relationships - we often take calls about problems with friends, peer pressure, making friends, friendship breakdowns and concerns for a friend’s wellbeing.
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Dating – many callers tell us of problems with boyfriends, girlfriends or partners and sexual issues.
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Bullying – young people call us to share about their experiences of deliberate emotional and physical harassment at school or at home and online bullying.
Find out more about Barnardos Aotearoa
Our counsellors
Our counsellors are trained professionals.
Barnardos’ counsellors receive more than 12,000 calls and chats from brave children and young people across the motu who reach out for help each year. Many of the children and teenagers who call us are trusting an adult with their feelings or concerns for the first time. Some will form an ongoing relationship with our counsellors, who’ll provide stable and reliable support when the caller needs it.
Learn more about our counsellors
Our philosophy
Child centred practice and empowerment is central to our counselling practice. We help to develop a child or teenager’s personal competence and resilience, so they can take a positive perspective on the world around them.
Child-centred practice underpins everything we do. We:
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Listen and normalise what children have to say
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Focus on their needs
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See the world from their perspective
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Know that the child is the primary client
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Provide tools and strategies to overcome their challenges Respect the child
Our history
What’s Up has been around for over 24 years. Jocelyn Cowern, a passionate advocate for children and young people, investigated establishing a children’s helpline in 1997. She wanted to base it on an Australian children’s help service called Kids Helpline. In 1999 the Kids Help Foundation Trust was set up and began to scope a helpline service in New Zealand, focusing on children aged seven to 12 years. This group was seen as being under-served by mental health providers and wasn’t benefiting from any other professional telephone counselling service at that time.
What’s Up answered its first call on 21 September 2001. What’s Up was the first helpline to introduce a web chat service in 2014. Since then, we have answered 1.6 million calls and 10,000 chats.
In 2012, What’s Up joined Barnardos Aotearoa as one of its key services to support children and teenagers in Aotearoa.
In January 2021, child-centred helpline Kidsline joined Barnardos Aotearoa, complementing our existing What’s Up telephone counselling and webchat service. As a result, Barnardos’ What’s Up is now Aotearoa’s only national children’s helpline, providing an essential service to children and young people who need a safe place to talk with a trained counsellor.
What’s Up ImpactLab Report
ImpactLab analysed the social value of our What’s Up service using their GoodMeasure methodology to assess its positive benefits, such as increased income, and avoided costs to government. Social value is the social impact in dollar terms that a programme achieves for participants over their lifetime. They found that What’s Up provides $2 of social value for every dollar spent on it, an excellent outcome for this unique service.
Our funding
Every call and webchat to What’s Up is free. Although we receive some government funding, to keep this service running we rely on generous supporters across Aotearoa New Zealand. Their support means we can help every child and young person who asks for it. If you'd like to become a supporter, you can:
Not sure if you want to merge the about us and our counsellors page together? Currently there’s a small blurb about our counsellors on this page but the actual our counsellors page goes into a bit more detail that could be useful.
This content hasn’t been checked by comms, so may need to be tweaked to the new tone of voice, and to make sure we are mentioning ‘Barnardos Aotearoa’ when we mention the org and not just ‘Barnardos’ or ‘Barnardos NZ’.
Will we need to add a section in here to our history about changing our name and rebranding? E.g. Based on feedback from the tamariki and rangatahi we help, in 2024 we refreshed the brand with a simplified name and a fresh new look while still continuing to offer the same vital service we have for the last 23 years.
There’s nothing on here that mentions what's up? If people have come to the donate page from the what's up website, it now looks like they are donating to barnardos and not to what's up. Is it possible to add something in here that allows people to donate specifically to what's up? Like create an ‘ask’ that is for what’s up?
About What’s Up helpline:
$500,000
Barnardos must raise over $500,000 each year to keep the phones and webchat open.
12,164
Last year, counsellors answered 12,164 calls and chats from children and young people.
1 in 5
Children who reach out to What’s Up are 12 years old or under.