Referrals and Partners
This information is to help adults understand more about Child Helpline Cambodia and its referral process and partners.
When a child or young person calls us, they may require direct services such as food, shelter, medical care or legal services. In these cases the Child Helpline Cambodia phone counsellor will work closely with the client to understand their needs and requires their approval before facilitating a referral on their behalf. Once the client agrees on being referred, we contact the relevant referral partner to provide them with the client’s case. Should the referral partner accept the case, we then follow-up with both the partner and client within a week to check on their progress and continue to offer emotional support to the client. Where a referral partner is not available to assist, we will explore other direct services in the client’s area and assess whether they are appropriate for an informal referral. An informal referral involves a phone counsellor providing information to a client about services in their communities and encouraging them to contact the service by themselves. Additionally, we work in cooperation with the local authorities and provide child rights and child protection training with police officers.
Child Helpline Cambodia’s official referral partners are from a broad range of direct service providers that include specialist agencies in domestic violence, trafficking, child protection, sexual and reproductive health, suicide, grief, sexual orientation, HIV and AIDS, drug use, relationships, body change and disability. We also try to have more than one referral partner in the same service area and province in case the partner’s services have reached capacity.
We select our official referral partners very carefully. The process starts by the Executive Director, Counselling Coordinator and Counselling Supervisor assessing a prospective referral partner’s services and meeting with their management, then discussing the assessment results with our internal team. Should the prospective referral partner meet our selection criteria, we formalize the partnership with a written agreement, and monitor cases and the partnership closely. Once a referral partnership is confirmed, Child Helpline Cambodia phone counsellors may also visit the partner’s facilities to meet with the staff so the teams can better understand what they each do and how they can work effectively together.
We are very proud to work with the below official referral partners in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Preah Sihanouk and thank them for their on-going support and cooperation. We hope to expand our referral network to other provinces soon. Amongst the below partners, some of them are coalitions and networks, which allow us to access many other NGOs in Cambodia.