Author: emily.crick

by Dr Tom Bason (Coventry University), Francesca Howard (Fast Forward), Wendy Knight (Early Knights Ltd)

This blog describes a small-scale exploratory research project that tested how to raise awareness about gambling harms among young people and adults living in deprived areas of Scotland.  We used classroom-based activities and Family Fun Days. It was funded by a Research Innovation Fund Seedcorn Grant from the Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms Research. The Seedcorn Grant scheme is for early-stage research projects to test ideas, generate new insights and build working relationships with external partners, from which larger-scale impactful projects can be developed.

The issue of gambling-related harms is increasingly concerning, particularly in Scotland, where treatment services lag behind the rest of the UK. This project explored different ways of engaging local communities in deprived areas to raise awareness of gambling harms and services that can support people who are impacted by them. We tested two activities:

Classroom Activities: Our partner Fast Forward – a charity that promotes young people’s health and wellbeing through education and training – conducted classroom-based activities with 12–14-year-olds in two schools that serve catchment areas ranked among the most deprived in Scotland. Students watched Fast Forward’s ‘Trust Me’ movie a week prior to a workshop in which Fast Forward staff led discussions on topics like gambling advertising, reducing gambling risks, the impact on others, and available support services. Around 110 students participated in these discussions. Following this, the students created sports shirt designs with positive messages about preventing gambling harms, resulting in 123 submissions – examples of which are shown below. The idea was for students to think about alternative messages to the gambling operator logos seen on the shirts of professional sports players. Some of the students’ designs were printed on T-shirts that were distributed at the Family Fun Days.

Community Events: We ran two Family Fun Days at the same schools, using rounders games to draw in local communities, followed by indoor workshops on gambling harms that were facilitated by Fast Forward. This approach integrated the educational component into the day’s activities, with the aim of making the workshop feel like a natural continuation of the fun rather than a separate, formal session. Food from local vendors was freely available at both events, which was an important part of engaging participants and provided an opportunity to tell local food vendors about the project. The RCA Trust – part of the National Gambling Support Network  – were also on hand to provide professional help if it was needed.

In total, 24 people attended the community events, including students from the schools, their family members, teachers and local politicians. As well as testing how community sports activities can be used to raise awareness about gambling harms, some adults from the local community engaged directly with Fast Forward staff about their own gambling issues.  The events also facilitated valuable conversations between project team members and local politicians about the issues facing local communities, such as the presence of betting shops on high streets in more deprived areas.

T-shirts featuring designs by the students were distributed at the Family Fun Days and worn by the rounders players and other attendees. These shirts, worn by school , sparked additional conversations about gambling harms. For example, a chance conversation at the gym with a mental health nurse – prompted by one of the shirts – resulted in Fast Forward delivering a gambling harm train session to local mental health workers. Materials, including posters designed by students, were left with the schools to display both the work and messages about gambling harms.

What we learned: Through this seedcorn project, we achieved our primary aim of showing how community-based sports-themed activities can be a hook to engage young people and the wider community to explore gambling and gambling harms. The project demonstrated the value of bringing together Fast Forward’s expertise of engaging young people in discussions around sensitive topics (e.g. using video as a medium to open up conversations) with Wendy Knight’s lived experience of gambling harms. We learned the importance of having resources to offer schools and students (such as T-shirts and posters) to encourage engagement; and needing to find times for the class-based activities that worked for the schools, given how far in advance they have to plan. The project also highlighted some of the practical challenges of conducting research with young people under 18, such as getting parental consent to participate in research and having a Plan B to sensitively deal with situations where some young people have got parental consent and others do not.

About the project team: The project was led by Coventry University, working with Fast Forward and Early Knights Ltd. The project team comprised Dr Tom Bason, Associate Professor, Centre for Business in Society, Coventry University; Francesca Howard, Programme Manager, Scottish Gambling Education Hub, Fast Forward; and Wendy Knight, Director of Early Knights Ltd.

 

 

 

 

 

by Dr Emily Arden-Close (Bournemouth University)

This blog describes a small-scale exploratory research project to better understand the barriers and challenges faced by women from minority ethnic groups in accessing gambling harms treatment and support, and potential ways to overcome them. It was funded by a Research Innovation Fund Seedcorn Grant from the Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms Research. The Seedcorn Grant scheme is for early-stage research projects to test ideas, generate new insights and build working relationships with external partners, from which larger-scale impactful projects can be developed.

Women from minority ethnic communities are under-represented in gambling addiction treatment services in Britain, although prevalence of gambling harm may be higher in these communities than in the general population. This project comprised: (1) A co-design study with women from minority ethnic groups who had received treatment for gambling-related harms to explore barriers to access and ways to overcome them; and (2) testing community-based Family Fun Days as a way to start conversations with women from minority ethnic groups about gambling and gambling harms.

Co-design study: We conducted qualitative research with 10 women from minority ethnic communities who had received treatment for gambling-related harms. Wendy Knight from Early Knights Ltd, who is from an ethnic minority background and has lived experience of gambling harms facilitated the group discussions, which helped put our participants at ease.  Our discussions highlighted how belonging to a close-knit community could be a barrier to seeking help, due to fears about how their community might respond to any disclosure of gambling problems and to feeling embarrassed. However, the women described how once they had talked to their social support network about their gambling, an empathetic and understanding response facilitated them getting help. They also talked about ways to raise awareness of the support that’s available, as they themselves had not known where to turn. In particular, they felt that advertising via social media – using content that is inclusively designed to reflect different socio-demographics – would enable gambling support services to reach a much wider audience. They felt that gambling treatment and support providers need to make sure that they use inclusive imagery and language on their websites and other content, otherwise people may think that services are not for them.

Family Fun Days: We held two Family Fun Days in public parks in Walsall and Sandwell, West Midlands. These are areas with a high proportion of residents from minority ethnic communities, which are also local to Gordon Moody’s gambling harms treatment and support services. We wanted to test if Family Fun Days, centred around community rounders matches, might be an effective way to raise awareness of gambling-related harms among women from minority ethnic communities. The events were advertised in public places locally and to schools. Rounders was facilitated through Rounders England in conjunction with Early Knights Ltd and t-shirts with the participating organisations’ logos provided to participants. Gordon Moody representatives attended to provide information about the service. Food was provided and an interactive talk on gambling-related harms was delivered by Red Card Gambling Support.

While both events ran smoothly, we had fewer participants than we expected. In particular, the Family Fun Days did not seem to be especially effective in engaging women from minority ethnic communities. We were, however, successful in engaging with men from the local community who were playing cricket in the parks, who chatted with the team and listened to Red Card’s talk about gambling-related harm.

What we learned:

• The co-design study showed that a lack of inclusive imagery and content on the websites (and other content) of treatment and support providers may be putting women from minority ethnic groups off seeking help. As a result of this learning, our project partner Gordon Moody is using the findings to make its website, advertising strategy and treatment more inclusive and attractive to a wider range of socio-demographic groups, including women from minority ethnic groups.
• We were able to further validate the value of co-designed projects. Working with a lived experience facilitator for the group discussions helped put participants at ease. Two people with lived experience also provided helpful feedback on our research findings.
• Our experience of testing Family Fun Days in public parks showed this may not be an effective way to engage women from minority ethnic groups in conversations about gambling and gambling harms. Future work could usefully explore what spaces women are comfortable accessing and potentially discussing these types of issues. Offering information and support about gambling-related harms at established community-based outdoor activities, such as Park Runs, could also be tested.
• The Family Fun Days highlighted the importance of fostering contacts, networks and relationships with local communities, community leaders and other stakeholders (such as local councils and universities) in order to co-design and deliver such events so they attract a larger and more diverse audience.

About the project team: The project was led by Bournemouth University, working with Gordon Moody, Early Knights Ltd and Red Card Gambling. The project team comprised Dr Emily Arden-Close, Bournemouth University; Dr Rosalind Baker-Frampton (Gordon Moody); Wendy Knight, Director of Early Knights Ltd.; and Tony Kelly (Red Card Gambling).

 

The Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms Research is launching its latest round of Research Innovation Fund Strategic Awards.

The aim of the Research Innovation Fund is to build capacity for innovative and impactful research that clearly outlines how it will benefit the public good.

The Strategic Awards will run for up to 12 months from August 2024 – July 2025. Awards are expected to be for up to £50K.

The deadline for applications is 31st May 2024.

There are more details on how to apply for the Strategic Award on our website or you can contact the Hub Research Development Associate, Dr Emily Crick.

Projects should fit with the Hub’s aims to help prevent and reduce gambling harms at all levels of society (e.g., individual, family and social networks, community and societal), deliver significant impact on the gambling research landscape and show the proactive engagement and involvement of people who are likely to benefit from the project. Projects can be co-designed with non-academic partners, but the awards must be led by academic staff or postgraduate researchers from Higher Education Institutions in the UK or internationally.

The Research Innovation Fund supports interdisciplinary research which transgresses boundaries and actively seeks to integrate and synthesise insights from one or more academic disciplines. The Research Innovation Fund aims to support researchers to work with scholars from other disciplines or under-represented disciplines e.g. Arts and Humanities.

Projects must align with at least one of our four Challenges? The four challenges are:
• Challenge 1 – Perceptions, Motivations, Decisions. What initiates harmful gambling?
• Challenge 2 – Narratives, Practice, Representation. What is the everyday practice and portrayal of gambling in social groups?
• Challenge 3 – Experience, Risk, Harm. What social inequalities exacerbate gambling harms?
• Challenge 4 – Innovation, Transition, Change. What socio-technical innovations can help combat gambling harms?

The Research Innovation Fund will also fund research into cross-cutting themes related to these four Challenges, such as inequality, vulnerability, resilience and social justice.

In the first year of the Research Innovation Fund the Hub awarded five projects:
• Enforcing ‘responsible gambling’ regulations: the (irresponsible?) impact on employees of betting and gambling outlets lead by Jo Large and Sam Kirwan (University of Bristol)
• Investigating neural signals during risky decision making lead by Paul Dodson (University of Bristol)
• The spatial signatures of gambling behaviours: access to online vs. brick-and-mortar facilities lead by Emmanouil Tranos (University of Bristol)
• A pilot study to assess the possibility of generating a quantitative analysis of the time evolution of gambling-related practices within cryptocurrency trading platforms lead by Sam Kirwan and Luca Giuggioli (University of Bristol)
• Mapping the data landscape in gambling harms research lead by Sharon Collard, Emmanouil Tranos and Jamie Evans (University of Bristol)

The Hub funded seven Strategic Award projects in 2023:
• Exploring the diffusion of gambling information impact on consumer’s behaviours, and to design a mitigating model to address harmful gambling in Namibia lead by Dr Selma Iilonga (University of Namibia)
• Gambling related harm: an urban perspective of betting shop and crime lead by Dr Oluwole Adeniyi (Nottingham Trent University)
• Live-Gam: Exploring the impact of viewing gambling on livestream platforms on the attitudes, behaviours, and engagement in young adults and adolescents towards gambling lead by Dr Glen Dighton (Swansea University)
• Understanding the relationship between stigma and gambling-related harm lead by Prof Zsolt Demetrovics, Dr Andrea Czakó and Yanisha Soborun (University of Gibraltar)
• Examining gambling harms within LGBTQ+ communities in the UK lead by Dr Reece Bush-Evans (Bournemouth University)
• Gambling harms among those under probation supervision in England and Wales lead by Dr Julie Trebilcock (Brunel University)
• Online help-seeking searches and gambling harm lead by Dr Sebastian Whiteford (Swansea University)

The Hub awarded six seedcorn projects in 2023:
• Delving into youth perspectives on in-game gambling-like elements lead by Dr Thomas Krause (University of Hohenheim, Germany)
• The role of performing arts in educating the youth against harmful gambling in Uganda lead by Dr Branco Sekalegga (Makerere University, Uganda)
• Stump the odds: developing an international network for collaborative research into gambling harms in professional cricket lead by Dr Carolyn Plateau (Loughborough University)
• Identification of and intervention in gambling effects among vulnerable groups in public universities in Kenya lead by Gregory Jumah Nyongesa (Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST), Kenya)
• Scoping, consensus building and raising awareness of gambling-related harms among rugby players in Wales lead by Cerys Head (Swansea University)
• Starting conversations about harmful gambling with ethnic minority women lead by Dr Emily Arden-Close (Bournemouth University)

By Sharon Collard, Personal Finance Research Centre and Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms Research
Please note: This blog discusses harmful gambling and its impacts.  

In July 2023, a team from the Personal Finance Research Centre, FinTech West and the lived experience-led charity Gambling Harm UK delivered a workshop to consider how FinTech can help reduce harm from gambling. This was a great example of ‘grounded innovation’ in action: bringing FinTechs together with people who have lived experience of gambling harms to focus on real-life issues and how to solve them.  

It highlighted useful products and services that FinTech firms already offer as well as opportunities for further innovation. Most of all, it showed the invaluable contribution that experts-by-experience like Gambling Harm UK bring to the table.  

We are grateful to Higher Education Innovation Funding for funding the workshop.  

Helping FinTechs understand the harms caused by gambling problems 

A key part of the workshop was Chris Gilham, Julie Martin and John Gilham from Gambling Harm UK sharing their own personal experiences, which illustrated the complex and messy nature of gambling problems and their serious long-term impacts.  

Chris told us about having been diagnosed with Adult ADHD just over eighteen months ago at almost 40 years of age, and how he has battled with his mental health since his mid-teens and using alcohol to cope. Then when he was 30 years old, having had no previous interest in gambling, he saw an advert and that day, he decided to try it. He explained that whilst gambling initially made him feel calmer, it wasn’t long before he was suffering from gambling harm. After almost five years of harm he finally found recovery following a two-day gambling binge, when he was planning to win and leave money to his family before ending his own life. Julie described the severe financial toll that her ex-husband’s gambling had on her and her children, meaning she had to work four jobs just to pay off loans he had taken out in her name, as well as the verbal, mental and sometimes physical abuse that she experienced. John (Chris’s dad) told us about his experiences as the parent of someone with a gambling addiction, how his life and that of his wife and family had been turned upside down and his role now supporting Chris in his recovery journey, including helping Chris keep tight control of his money.  

These real-life experiences really resonated with workshop participants – even if they had no experience of gambling harms. Our rich discussion touched on many issues including the links between ADHD and impulse behaviours such as gambling; the fact that there is no single reason for gambling problems; and the normalisation of gambling-like behaviours in online games that are so popular among children and young people, through features like microtransactions and loot boxes that are played to get an edge. John reminded us that 55,000 young people aged 11-16 in Britain are categorised as ‘problem’ gamblers – a term which stigmatises those suffering from this illness – with a further 85,000 young people estimated to be at risk of harm from gambling. 

How FinTechs can help reduce harms from gambling 

There is no perfect solution to help someone control their gambling. Blocks, self-exclusion schemes and other features can all be circumvented if gambling has become the most important activity in someone’s life and dominates their thinking, feelings, and behaviour. Nonetheless, the workshop highlighted a whole range of things that FinTechs are already doing as well as challenges still to be solved, such as joint accounts that give more control and protection. It also illustrated the invaluable contribution that experts-by-experience like Gambling Harm UK can bring to the table in terms of product ideation, design, and testing.  

Data-driven early intervention: Starling Bank described how it had a specialist team that proactively contacted loan customers to offer help where their underwriting team identified potential harm from gambling (or where they were in other potentially vulnerable situations), including links to external sources of support. It accepted that the message won’t always land well with customers but in its experience, there was more positive than negative feedback from customers. Saying the right things, in the right way is key, which Chris, Julie and Julie all confirmed was so important, means testing the language and training staff. Indicators of potentially harmful gambling might include applying for large loans late at night and multiple gambling transactions across several sites in a very short space of time.  

Enhanced friction and control features: At a time when it is quicker and easier than ever to set up a new bank account or take out a sizable loan, there is significant potential to give customers more control over their spending from the get-go. This might be a bank account where you have to opt-in to be able to gamble rather than opting out; or a non-gambling banking app with enhanced transaction monitoring. Through its personal financial management features, Moneyhub enables its users to set up spending flags across multiple accounts, making it easier for people to see what they are spending on different expenditure categories (such as gambling) where they may want to exercise more control and set spend limits. As Chris attested from his personal experience, tools to help people set up, and stick to, a budget can be an invaluable part of someone’s recovery from gambling addiction, ideally with a human element as well.  

Joint accounts: As an affected other, Julie highlighted the problems that resulted from having a joint account with her then-husband. He took her earnings and their savings from the joint account to gamble leaving her in dire financial straits, but Julie was unable to close the account without his permission. While joint accounts nowadays offer both parties easier visibility of the account data, for example via banking apps, in practice there may not be equal access or control if one partner is the victim of coercive control or financial abuse. Other research has highlighted the potential for a safer joint account using Open Banking payment initiation, but while the technology exists to build such a product, it is not yet available.  

Help to rebuild finances in recovery: John wanted to see financial services do more to support people with gambling problems to achieve sustainable recovery, by helping them rebuild their finances and their credit rating. Partly this is about raising awareness among FinTechs and other financial firms that gambling addiction is an impulse control disorder; and that people in recovery may be returning to a life they need help to cope with. 

In practical terms, it is about helping people build their finances so they can rebuild their lives, for example offering lower interest rates to people who have shown they can stick to a loan repayment schedule; allowing people to pay back debt over longer periods without penalising them; providing money management features such as ‘account sweeping’ to help repay debt or to start saving.  

Make gambling harms a normal thing to talk about: making it normal for us to talk about gambling harms and their potentially devastating impacts makes a lot of sense, given that millions of people in the UK are affected – not just the person who gambles but those around them as well. And taking the conversation to FinTechs and other financial services firms has the potential to stimulate even greater innovation for good.  

“Thank you so much for speaking to us in Bristol today. You really brought home how important it is for financial service providers to engage and to think bigger and better about how we can prevent and reduce harm and aid recovery. And for me most importantly, some immediately actionable insights which we can do something to address now in our own lending practices. Every step in the right direction, however, small, is very valuable in making change.” James Berry CEO, Great Western Credit Union. 

“Thank you for organising such a fascinating yet poignant discussion. Matthew Barr, John Dyer and I left energised planning how we at Moneyhub can do more to support those affected by gambling harm and how financial institutions can position themselves as a first line of defence to protect those who are vulnerable.” Jonathan Bell, Sales Director (Decisioning), Moneyhub. 

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If you have been affected by any of the issues in this blog, you can contact the National Gambling Helpline which provides confidential advice, information and support by telephone and webchat free of charge.  

To find out more about the work of Gambling Harm UK, please contact John Gilham, CEO: john@gamharm.co.uk 

This blog was originally posted on the Personal Finance Research Centre’s (PFRC) blog.