SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
GambleAware’s newly published independent evaluation report has revealed a big improvement in gambling harm awareness within local communities.
Setting out achievements and learning from the first year of its Community Resilience Fund (CRF), the report was produced by Ipsos and New Philanthropy Capital and has been described as a new way of commissioning gambling harms awareness and support services.
It was designed to provide funding to organisations GambleAware had not previously funded, and to support learning about which methods may work for different groups.
Anna Hargrave, GambleAware Chief Commissioning and Strategy Officer, commented: “Gambling harm can affect anyone, but we know certain communities are at higher risk of experiencing harm. These are the people we wanted to reach with our Community Resilience Fund.”
The CRF provided grants to 21 community-based organisations in England, Wales, and Scotland to deliver gambling harm support and raise awareness.
The group detailed that these organisations had ‘existing expertise’ in working with a diverse range of communities who are at risk of experiencing gambling harm but are currently underrepresented in gambling support services.
This includes people from ethnic minority and marginalised groups, and people experiencing poverty and living in areas of high deprivation.
Most of these organisations, which include charities helping people experiencing homelessness, and charities set up by professional sports teams, had not previously delivered any specific support for gambling harms.
“We are pleased that the organisations who received funding were able to help so many people in their communities, especially as many of the people they work with are from marginalised groups who may not usually access gambling support services,” Hargrave added.
“It is concerning that stigma may have stopped some people coming forward for help from the organisations which received funding.
“At GambleAware we have campaigned to try and end the stigma associated with gambling harm so that people feel able to come forward and get support, and we will continue working towards this goal.”
One of the organisations which received funding was Big Issue Changing Lives CIC. This social enterprise works with individuals experiencing homelessness, poverty, or marginalisation to provide them with opportunities to gain economic self-sufficiency.
As part of the CRF programme, Big Issue Changing Lives focused on addressing gambling-related harms among vendors of the Big Issue and aimed to prevent individuals from turning to gambling to manage their financial hardship.
“We are very grateful to the CRF for their support,” said Gwyn Thomas de Chroustchoff, the organisation’s Service Development Manager.
“Through this programme, our Big Issue vendor support teams have learnt how to broach conversations around gambling with our vendors, building relationships and trust with those affected. It’s really opened our eyes on how we talk about this issue and ways we can protect our vendors from gambling harm.
“We appreciated working with the project team at GambleAware, and their responsive grant management approach. We also were pleased to have regular opportunities to share learnings with other organisations in the fund, with the monitoring, evaluation and learning support offered.”
