Are we ready for the web-enabled social worker? The royal borough of Kingston-upon-Thames, tucked away to the south-west of London, believes we are.

The children and families division of the borough's community services directorate has set up Young Livin', a help and advice website for youth in the area. The site gives young people access to a social work service, via site-based email.

Team manager Eion Rush, who leads the project, said: "We have been working to try and make our services more accessible to young people. Young people rarely refer themselves to social services. They come through police, school, GPs, parents - by which time the problems are likely to be fairly serious."

About a year ago, Mr Rush and administrator Linda Jackson set up a project at local Tolworth girls' school to find out what issues pupils would like advice and help about. The group also developed a poster, which has been used on the site's homepage, to inform their peers about their services.

During the course of the project, Mr Rush became aware of two things. First, that most children wouldn't dream of phoning up social services or walking into an area office for help. And second, that children were seeking help and advice via the internet - and not always with the best results.

One 12-year-old contacted a wrestling federation website for advice about how to cope with domestic violence in his family. He got an email telling him that he could join up and beat up his stepfather when he was 18.

Students at the school worked with Mr Rush and Ms Jackson to build the website, which they then piloted among their peers. The final version was launched earlier this month.

The site allows young people to email a "personal adviser" - a social worker by a less stigmatising name. "Everyone needs advice," Mr Rush pointed out.

Every one of the 19,000 young people in the borough has an email address through their school. Eight in 10 have internet access at school but they can also access the site from any linked computer, including in local libraries.

A young person wanting help can fill in a simple electronic (email) form on the site. This form is routed to one of two offices - depending on which area the young person ticks as their place of residence - where duty officers deal with it. Those staff will then follow them up as they would any other referral, although they will always reply by email to the young person - and sometimes advice is all that's needed.

Depending on the seriousness of the problem (and whether or not the person has ticked "urgent" on the email form), they can call a pupil out of school. To this end, they are planning to work closely with all schools in the borough, following the successful Tolworth pilot. A copy of every email also goes to a central account, where there are random checks to ensure that enquiries are being properly dealt with.

In the site's first week, there were 300 hundred hits. "It provides an accessible and confidential service to young people using a medium that they are entirely at ease with," said Margie Rooke, head of children and family services. There have also been three young people asking for help.

Social services are now working with 14-year-old Alice Jones (not her real name) who contacted the site because she was in fear of being physically abused by her father. "I was getting desperate and I knew there was no point in talking to my mum," she said. "I was too embarrassed to speak to anyone and felt ashamed. When I heard about the website at school assembly I thought I could tell someone without having to face them. I just sent it off."

"I hope that cases like Alice's show that we'll be able to intervene earlier," said Mr Rush.

A monitoring group of young people has been set up to review both the site and representative email from the social workers, to make sure that the responses hit the right tone. A by-product of the site is skills development for young people. Eighteen-year-old Malcolm Cannon, who, as an A-level work experience student, helped design and build the site, has been offered a web design job on the back of it.

Youth involvement is "definitely important", he said. "It's made by kids for kids. We feel that we know what information we want to find. Kids should enjoy it first. So, if me and the Tolworth girls liked it, we could assume others would. It's come from them and it's entirely what they wanted."

Malcolm and four girls from Tolworth launched the site in front of Kingston councillors. "We were being asked and the councillors could see that this was what the young people of Kingston wanted," he said. "It was definitely something a bit different for them."