The Helpline Service, which consists of calls, web chat, and emails has seen a year-on-year demand for support. All contacts are responded to by a highly trained team of staff and volunteers who cover the service in shifts each weekday from 9am to 9pm. With the continued increase in demand, we’ve recruited new Helpline Service Officers during 2020 – 2021 which means there are now 10 salaried staff members on the team.
As well as working on the helpline service, the staff team oversees the online forum and the application process to join the parent and youth groups on the forum. On 3 December 2020, we saw a year of hard work come to fruition when we moved our members to our own platform where we could host our forum offering enhanced confidentiality and security.
The launch of our Webchat service in 2017 saw Mermaids significantly increase our support mechanism to young people and by 2020-2021, 77% of the contact via that format was from young people.
| Year | Calls | Emails | Chats | Total |
| 2017/18 | 2,162 | 2,818 | 208 | 5,188 |
| 2018/19 | 3,497 | 5,566 | 639 | 9,702 |
| 2019/20 | 3,305 | 6,813 | 1,629 | 11,747 |
| 2020/21 | 2,613 | 13,394 | 2,856 | 19,042 |
This email is for Lynne who I spoke to this afternoon regarding my little one. Please let her know that her support meant the world to me and I was able to be clear and helpful during my meeting. Please let her know I will be referring to her help in the future and that we are so grateful for her time!”
Parent, helpline service user
I’m 20 now but I’ve used the (youth) forum since I was 17. I first came on here when I was struggling and through the support on here and from Mermaids I managed to come out at college and legally change my name, everyone in my life uses my correct name and pronouns and it’s made me so much more comfortable!”
Youth forum user