More than 11,600 minors at risk of abuse request help via the chat room promoted by the ANAR Foundation and the "la Caixa" Foundation

Since it was launched in November 2017, the ANAR Chat has managed to deal with more than 11,600 requests for help from children and adolescents throughout the country. The ANAR Foundation developed this pioneering service with the support of the "la Caixa" Foundation and the Ministry of Social Rights and Agenda 2030 to help minors through the technologies and tools they use most frequently. 

The ANAR Foundation and the "la Caixa" Foundation have presented their first results, which demonstrate its enormous effectiveness in helping children and adolescents, as well as the great need that exists for this service among the youngest people in our country. 

This silent service, which allows children and adolescents to ask for help even in the presence of their aggressors without putting them in danger, has led to the detection of 4,500 serious cases since its creation. 

Technologically designed so that conversations are automatically eliminated, ANAR Chat avoids putting the minor at risk in the event of being caught by his or her aggressor.

This feature has been particularly useful in helping cases of domestic violence during the strict confinement caused by COVID-19. In this situation, the ANAR Foundation saw the need to extend the service 24 hours a day, every day of the year (previously the opening hours were from 16:00 to 24:00), given that no one else could get to help the youngest, who were often locked up with their own abuser. 

"la Caixa" Foundation is committed to this innovative project with the ANAR Foundation because of its long history of helping minors at risk through the ANAR Telephone. Attention to children in situations of difficulty or distress is one of our priorities and we saw that, with this chat, ANAR could multiply its impact, as it has done, reaching many more minors and, above all, those with more serious problems", explained Marc Simón, Deputy Director General of the "la Caixa" Banking Foundation.

89.3% of the chats attended were of medium or high severity. This service is complemented by the ANAR telephone, which can be automatically transformed into a call when the case requires it due to its urgency and seriousness. The urgency was medium or high in 81.1% of the cases attended. 

The seriousness and urgency of the minors attended to led to a total of 12,423 referrals to legal and social resources throughout the country. In addition, 436 extremely serious cases required ANAR to intervene with the security forces and emergency services immediately to avoid a fatal outcome. 

The main reason why teenagers ask for help through the ANAR Chat is violence, followed by psychological and emotional problems that make their day-to-day life difficult. 

Physical and psychological abuse suffered within their own home is the main reason for consultations on violence (42%), followed by school bullying ( 7%). 

This channel makes it easier for minors to express themselves in a more comfortable way to talk about such sensitive issues as the sexual abuse they are suffering (4.7% of cases), even when they live with their own aggressor. 

All 12 typologies of violence analysed cover both domestic violence and violence outside the home. The minors relate their experiences in a more detailed way due to the anonymity provided by the ANAR Chat.

Whereas the family, schools and other adults in their environment ask for advice through the ANAR Chat, to a greater extent, for educational and developmental guidelines, the youngest ones, however, express serious psychological problems. These include: high anxiety, suicide ideas or attempts, self-harm, depressive symptoms, low self-esteem, eating disorders, loneliness and fear. 

"The ANAR Chat reveals that adolescents often live an accompanied solitude, in which those around them are not aware of the problems that are really affecting them", as Benjamín Ballesteros, director of programmes at the ANAR Foundation, has stressed. 

The ANAR Chat facilitates openness and communication in very serious cases that they had not been able to tell anyone about before. Four out of ten minors who resorted to ANAR through the chat (45.8%) had suffered from the problem for more than a year, without having been able to tell anyone or without having been able to find a solution. Moreover, in more than half of the cases, children and adolescents were suffering from the problem on a daily basis (52.9%). 

"One of the worst kinds of suffering is to suffer a problem in silence, for a long time and on a daily basis. This is the situation of the majority of children and adolescents who ask us for help through the ANAR Chat. As it is a medium to which they are accustomed, it is perceived as an accessible and safe channel, which has made it easier for them to tell us about problems they had not dared to tell anyone before. In this way, we have managed to help them when nobody else was able to do so," said Benjamín Ballesteros.