Six children a day were victims of abuse, while almost two children a day showed suicidal tendencies in 2023, according to data announced earlier today by the “Smile of the Child”. At the focus of today’s meeting organized by the organization, was the prevention as well as the effective treatment of the problems that concern children, such as bullying and delinquency, teenage runaways, disappearances of children, as well as suicidality expressed by children and teenagers. Also, the organization’s work report, as well as the 10 specialized action centers for the year 2023, was presented today.

The meeting, which took place at the organization’s operational center in Agia Paraskevi, was attended by competent bodies, such as local government representatives, judicial officials, doctors, teachers, journalists, psychologists and social workers, executives of “Smile of the Child”, who discussed the huge problems that children face, with the rates increasing alarmingly, but also the many dangers they face every day.

The president of Smile of the Child, Costas Yiannopoulos, in his greeting he said: “Today there is another attempt to apologize, to talk about what we did as a society, what we did as Smile of the Child last year for our children. We decided in this report, not to refer only to the statistics, to the 93,000 children we helped in 2023, but to present the cutting edge of the problems that children face at the moment. Without cooperation, without synergies, without sympathy, without an effort to make the institutions work and not each of us to replace the institutions, but to complement them. After all, this is our principle, especially of a voluntary organization”. Mr. Yiannopoulos also emphasized that “the Smile of the Child in 2023, was even more shielded with additional control mechanisms than the existing ones, in order to ensure its work and its continuation consistently”.

“Unfortunately” as Mr. Yiannopoulos pointed out “our statistics for 2023 are extremely worrying and perfectly reflect the enormous problems children face and the many dangers they face every day. Indicatively in 2023, we received and managed daily reports (named and anonymous) of the abuse of 6 children.”

THE Ioanna Hardaloupa, psychologist-coordinator at the Center for Bullying Violence and Intimidation, of the Smile of the Child, talking about bullying and delinquency and announcing the statistics for 2023, stated that “we did one consultation every two days for bullying in children (252 consultations ). In other words, children called us for issues related to bullying and we provided counseling support. Of those incidents handled by the 1056 and 116111 bullying and delinquency lines, most of the children who called appeared to be teenagers and mostly boys. Another important fact is that the incidents of prevention interventions for violence issues, carried out in schools, almost doubled, while every school day about 230 students nationwide were sensitized and informed about the issue of bullying. In total, 30,000 students were informed about bullying.”

The former prosecutor of the Supreme Court, Xeni Dimitriou, speaking about bullying and children’s delinquency, pointed out: “We have not taken care of children’s cognitive abilities. We have not taken care of their social skills, neither the family, nor the schools, nor the state. The children, after the pandemic, lost their pace, lost their boundaries. I think boundaries are the children’s safety, they are their firewall. They want boundaries, they trust boundaries, decent boundaries. We are talking about a firewall with expansion outlets. These firewalls and their boundaries, we must have foreseen, have relief valves. And there are a lot of such valves and I will mention a typical example with music and art schools, where byllying is almost non-existent. This tells us something.”

The psychologist and coordinator at the National Center for Abuse and Exploitation, Smile of the Child, spoke about the discouraging numbers regarding child abuse, as she noted, 6 reports of child abuse are made every day. “This number tells us the extent, but it shows us that people trust us, are informed about what it means for a child to experience violence in their home, are aware and know where to call to report it. The majority of these reports it involved neglect and abandonment, physical abuse – and for 92 children it involved sexual abuse.”

It is noted that with regard to the suicide of children and adolescents, according to the organization’s data, 615 cases of suicidal ideation have been reported (1.7 per day), with 431 of these cases involving children aged 13-17, of which 313 they were girls. According to the same data, the causes that led children to express suicidality were (in order of priority): relationships with family, relationships with peers, history or current mental illness, domestic violence.

THE Irini Rizopoulou, social worker, coordinator at the National Center for the Disappearance of Children and Adults, emphasized regarding the disappearance of children: “The ‘Smile’ is always next to every missing child and his family and by the term ‘missing child’ we refer to the child who it is located away from the people who care for it. According to our statistics for 2023, we managed 246 cases of missing children, for 186 children, that is, for some of them there was a repeated disappearance. Also, every two days we dealt with a case of a missing child, with an average time of finding him in 2 days. The largest percentage of children who disappear are children who run away, while in terms of their profile, the runaway of teenage girls of Greek origin remains a dominant figure in Greece, while the cause of disappearance is mainly the relationship with adults”.

During the meeting, special mention was made of the action of the 10 specialized centers that the organization has set up and whose aim is to provide targeted services to children and families in the country, focusing on prevention as well as the effective treatment of all that concerns them, such as bullying, children’s delinquency, disappearances and escapes, serious health problems and living problems.

The 10 Child Smile action centers are: the National Center for Abuse and Exploitation, the Center for Violence and Bullying, the Support Center for Vulnerable Families, Children and Young People, the Center for Health Services, Care Homes, the National Center for the Disappearance of Children and Adults, Support and Help Lines, the Center for Internet Safety, the Smile Academy Education and Training Academy, the Crisis Management Center.

Also important elements of the “Smile of the Child” are the 199,805 calls managed by the 4 Help and Support Lines, while it is noted that only on the SOS Line 1056, the organization managed 515 calls per day.

Help and Support Lines:

National line for children SOS 1056

European Child and Adolescent Helpline 116111

European Hotline on Disappearances 116000

National Hotline for Missing Adults 1017