The gambling problem
Katie Fry tells her story of putting gambling-related harm on the agenda of front-line advice agencies

This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of Adviser magazine and was correct at the date of publishing.
Newport Citizens Advice has been involved in gambling-related harm (GRH) minimisation since 2012. We started work in this area as part of the South Wales Gambling Related Harm Minimisation (GRaHM) pilot, which we delivered with three other organisations in South Wales. The pilot ran from 2012–15, funded by our lead partners — the Bristol-based Addiction Recovery Agency (ARA), which, in turn, received funding from the Responsible Gambling Trust (now known as GambleAware). Today, our GRH arm, Gambling Support Service (GSS), is directly funded by GambleAware to support clients and to deliver awareness and training to frontline advice agencies.
I came on board the GRaHM pilot in March 2012 as a part-time gambling intervention worker (GIW). The role involved raising awareness of problem gambling in Newport, building and strengthening partnerships, and supporting anyone who might be affected by problem gambling. Despite the growth in gambling, it became apparent that there was little awareness of problem gambling in the region and I was frequently met with the statement, “We don’t see anyone with a gambling problem”. This was despite statistics showing that 73% of the adult population participated in gambling and that problem gambling rose from stable levels of 0.6% of the population in 1999 and 2007, to 0.9% in 2010 (British Gambling Prevalence Study 2010). These statistics, combined with increased advertising, 24–7 availability and the quickly developing remote gambling sector, led to serious concerns among stakeholders, who felt that greater awareness and education around gambling and its risks were needed. The lack of awareness in our region underscored the concern that problem gambling is difficult to identify, and that a greater understanding of the harm gambling can cause was required.
The pilot gave us the opportunity to gain experience in harm minimisation and early intervention, and we developed training courses that challenged the conception that people ‘don’t see’ problem gambling. Those early years were challenging as we looked to raise awareness of GRH. But eventually the message got through and stakeholders began to recognise GRH. Today, it is widely acknowledged, and a key part of our message is that you do not have to be a problem gambler to experience GRH.
As the pilot began to draw to an end, we gathered our clients’ experiences together to look at what harm gambling was causing them. We were lucky enough to have a volunteer from the Office for National Statistics working with us, and with their help we were able to put together a small report that detailed our key findings from the GraHM pilot:
* Most clients (problem gamblers) self-referred, citing debt and relationship breakdown as the main reason for seeking help at that time.
* Debt advisers, housing officers and student finance were among the partner agencies who referred people to us.
* People affected by the gambling of others reported ‘debt’ had led to the discovery of problem gambling.
How front-line advice agencies can help
The issues that our clients experience, such as debt, housing and relationship breakdown, are familiar to front-line advice agencies such as Citizens Advice. Our report findings therefore corroborated what key stakeholders were reporting: that front-line advice agencies have the potential to identify signs of GRH, make brief interventions and signpost appropriately.
As the pilot ended, we began campaigning to keep the ball rolling and to look at ways to continue our work with Citizens Advice and other front-line advice agencies.
We built a new partnership with our local Public Health team and provided input into their report ‘New and Emerging Threats to the Health of the Gwent Population’. This acknowledges the importance of brief intervention, awareness-raising among the public, and the roles of professionals in offering early intervention. It recognises the need for greater awareness and early intervention in GRH by professionals. We still engage with Public Health Wales and encourage it to make GRH a public health issue. The recently appointed Chief Medical Officer has voiced his concerns about gambling and its normalisation in society. He is looking to expand his knowledge in this area.
Public Health Wales uses an approach called MECC — Making Every Contact Count. This is not dissimilar to the approach we use, which is to encourage people ‘to have a word’ and to offer brief intervention when possible. This is part of the tier-one training that we provide to front-line agencies. There is work still to be done but strategically we are continuing to encourage and influence more input from health and social commissioners.
In the year after the pilot, we worked with the Responsible Gambling Strategy Board (RGSB), which published a position paper emphasising the role that front-line advice agencies could offer. I was then invited to present at a seminar in 2016 about GRH and debt. Following that, I was invited onto the Gambling Commission Community Liaison Board, a position that I still hold, representing Citizens Advice as a leader in this field.
As funding ended, I was supported by our trustee board and CEO who retained my post while we looked for funding. I took the opportunity to train as a generalist adviser, which gave me valuable insight into some of the barriers that could prevent advisers from exploring whether a client’s issue could be a result of GRH.
When GambleAware opened an invitation to tender for Harm Minimisation funding in the summer of 2015, I put in a full bid and we were thrilled to be successful in receiving grant funding. GambleAware further encouraged us to explore how we could develop this work nationally. Citizens Advice was responsive to our suggestions of peer-to-peer learning and developing training and we returned to GambleAware with a revised bid.
The revised bid was accepted and the Gambling Support Service began in January 2016. Initially, it was just myself, but by April 2016 we had a full team of four staff and by the summer we were delivering our full harm-minimisation programme.
Every contact counts
This year has been extremely busy for our team; by the end of March 2017, we had delivered tier-one intervention training to more than 200 front-line advice staff. We raise awareness in a variety of ways, such as hosting workshops, delivering presentations, attending meetings, setting up stalls and keeping an active presence on social media. Our client support comes in different guises, from brief conversations to full extended interventions over a number of weeks. From January 2016 to March 2017 we helped more than 340 clients. Our aim is to make every contact count and to have a conversation with anyone who may be experiencing or at risk of GRH. Our support is open to anyone, be it a young person who is beginning to spend too much money on gaming or a grandmother who has been financially exploited by her problem-gambler grandson.
There is still much work to be done to improve identification and intervention for anyone at risk or experiencing harm from gambling. Like all the stakeholders, I firmly believe that Citizens Advice and other front-line advice agencies can play an important role. This work sits firmly within the aims and principles that Citizens Advice prides itself on: providing free, confidential and impartial advice to everyone while campaigning to improve policies and practices that affect people’s lives.
Our vision moving forward is that when ‘help for gambling problem’ is entered into a search engine, it is not a betting advert that you see, but a link to CitizensAdvice.org.uk, providing clients with the information and advice they need.
Katie Fry is the Gambling Support Service Project Manager at Newport Citizens Advice.
