GambleAware invests £2.5m to develop GamCare-led education programmes further
The investment will be used to expand the Gambling Education Hub Service across England and Wales
GambleAware has invested £2.5m with GamCare and its education partners to further develop the Gambling Education Hub Service (GEHS) to cover more of the UK.
The service has already been piloted in Scotland with great success and this investment will also look to improve the service underway there.
The money has been issued to the charity GamCare, which will work alongside education partners YGAM and Adferiad Recovery to develop the GEHS service.
Following on from the pilot in Scotland, it was found that 92% of practitioners felt they were able to identify the signs of potential gambling harm, compared top 35% prior to entering training.
The hubs are gambling education programmes, which include toolkits, training and peer-based theatre performances, are aimed at professionals who work with young people, parents and carers as well as young people themselves.
GambleAware found this kind of project vital after conducting research in 2020, which showed that 94% of young people aged between 11 and 17 years old in the UK had been exposed to some form of gambling advertising in the month prior to the research.
The hubs in Scotland have reached 32 local authority areas so far, with their work reaching 15,800 young people in schools across 29 of those local authorities.
CEO of GambleAware, Zoë Osmond, said: “At a time when young people are increasingly exposed to gambling, the delivery of local-focused programmes for gambling education and prevention of harms has never been more important.
“We hope to see the positive short-term impacts from the Scottish Education Hub’s activities replicated in our newly commissioned English and Welsh Education Hubs, and we are excited to have awarded this grant to these two highly experienced organisations,” Osmond added.
Anna Hemmings, the Chief Executive of GamCare, commented: “We are looking forward to building on the successes of our work with young people, their parents and professionals in a new programme aimed at increasing visibility of both local and national education and support, and to working with GambleAware and our partners towards our shared aspiration of reducing gambling-related harms for young people.”