MORE than 2,000 North West children a day fail to get through to the life-saving charity ChildLine because it can not afford to answer their calls.

Youngsters in the region are also more fearful of bullying than children in other parts of the country and most children calling for help are younger than the national average.

The alarming figures have been released to mark the 10th anniversary of the national child protection charity on October 30.

ChildLine, founded by TV personality Esther Rantzen, has now launched a national advertising campaign to highlight the need for more money. Bosses estimate that 3,000 attempted calls to the freephone number, 0800 1111, are made each day in the North West, where there are one-and-a-half million children.

But fewer than 1,000 of them are answered because of a lack of resources and many of those still do not get to speak to a counsellor straight away.

William Kidd, director of ChildLine North West, said: "It's a question of cash. The calls are free to children because we foot the bill. If we raise more money, we take more calls and counsel more children. It's that simple.

"To close the gap between what we can do and what we'd like to do, ChildLine's Tenth Birthday Appeal aims to raise £7 million across the UK this year - double our usual income.

"Our ultimate goal is that every child who calls us is able to get through to a ChildLine counsellor at their first attempt."

Nationally, family relationship problems were the biggest cause of calls in the year ending on March 31.

But bullying was the main problem in the North West, with 1,597 callers speaking to a counsellors about the problem lastyear, 13 per cent of the total.

Most local children calling ChildLine were between eight and 14, compared to between ten and 16 nationally.

Mr Kidd added: "Bullying doesn't just happen in schools and we only hear about the bad side and the problems but it appears that schools haven't come up with good policies to deal with it."

More children have called ChildLine about physical and sexual abuse than anything else in the last ten years.

When the charity was launched, most child callers complaining of sexual abuse said it had been happening for at least a year.

But now, 40 per cent of sexually abused children who call ChildLine do so within weeks of being abused.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.