EPIC to promote lived experience education during 2022 Safer Gambling Week

As Safer Gambling Week gets underway, gambling harm minimisation consultancy group EPIC Risk Management has revealed its itinerary for the seven days. 

The firm states that lived experiences will ‘be at the heart of all’ of its planned events’, deploying staff members with first-hand knowledge of the effects of gambling harm and delivering insight and understanding on this topic.

Specific target audiences of the sessions are demographics and groups most likely to be affected by problem gambling, including the criminal justice service, education, armed forces, sport, financial services, construction and the gambling industry itself.

“There are a number of reasons why institutions should always keep safer gambling and player protection at the forefront of their thinking,” said Dan Spencer, Director of Safer Gambling at EPIC.

“Problem gambling can manifest itself in any number of ways, and this can have an adverse effect on performance, damage reputations or leave companies at risk of breaching regulatory compliance.

“Most organisations will also feel that they have a duty of care, welfare and conscience to protect employees and customers as a matter of public health, taking into account the implications on wider society.”

A breakdown of EPIC’s week-long schedule in the UK includes education sessions at eight schools for children aged above 14, as well as lived experience presentations at two English professional sports clubs. 

Wider European commitments include speaking obligations at conferences and seminars on safer gambling and player protection in London and Amsterdam, along with  the European Safer Gambling Week webinar, delving into ‘Harnessing data and technology to make online gambling safer’.

Further afield, the group will also send a speaker to a conference in Melbourne, whilst Australia will also act as host to an EPIC-organised round-table of major sports institutions on gambling harm identification.

In the US, the firm plans ‘multiple gambling harm awareness seminars’ to student athletes across three National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) campuses.

Finally, the group will deliver sessions to customer-facing staff at ‘major industry operators’ on harm identification and prevention, and host a free online webinar sharing a lived experience story to a public audience.

EPIC’s focus throughout Safer Gambing Week, as Spencer explained, will revolve around providing educational support to operators seeking to bolster player protection weather through a sense of duty of care, welfare, or public health concerns.

He concluded: “Any of these reasons in isolation, or a combination of several such factors, are a valid cause for companies to reach out and work with us, hence why we greatly value the opportunity to work with such a wide variety of sectors all year round, and deliver on our business mission: ‘learning from lived experience, we aim to take the problem out of gambling’.”

In pursuit of its goals, EPIC recently made updates to its Interactions Masterclass education series in line with updated UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) guidelines.  In February 2023 will hold a safer gambling exposition and conference event at London’s Wembley Stadium.