Nearly half of all abuse reported by callers to a specialist telephone service occurred within the family home, new figures show.

New figures from a nationwide counselling service show abuse is still most likely to happen in a family setting.

Connect, which provides counselling services for adults who were abused in childhood, is to extend it's opening hours over the Christmas holidays to deal with an increase in calls.

One in five calls to a counselling helpline for adult survivors of childhood abuse are going unanswered because of staff shortages.

The number of calls made to the country’s telephone counselling service soared by 22% last year to 10,384, but 28% of calls went unanswered.