UKGC Works to Improve Monitoring of Gambling's Bad Influence on Minors and Reduce Its Harm

The UKGC has laid out a detailed strategy that should help combat the burning issue of underage gambling. The new framework has been designed to measure gambling harm detected in minors as well as serving as a reminder to operators that next week is when a new set of rules for age and identity verification comes into effect.

The framework has been devised in a joint effort by the UKGC, Advisory Board for Safer Gambling, GambleAware and Ipsos MORI...

...and it seeks to cover an array of types of harm gambling inflicts upon children and young people in general.

Protecting Youth at All Costs

It proposed that potential harm is divided into four categories: health, relationships, finance and development. The parties working on the framework identified these areas...

...via a number of relevant methods as areas in which issues that they cover most frequently manifest themselves, using input from young people themselves, as well as gambling professionals and people with a vast experience working with the youth.

Ipsos MORI came up with questions (to be included in Young Person's Omnibus, annual school age children survey across the UK) by acquiring opinions recorded during the workshop in which industry professionals and youth workers took part.

The results of the survey will be publicly posted later this year.

What Is to be Done After the Survey

The UKGC will work closely with its partners once the results of the survey are in, to determine which questions proved to be most effective in monitoring underage gambling. Demographics of 11 to 16 year-olds will be asked these questions on a yearly basis...

...which would make it possible to establish the exact level of gambling-related harm for the said age group.

The Commission has recently published the new National Strategy to Reduce Gambling Harms which focuses on improving prevention and education efforts and looks to better the level of support and quality of treatment.

A Critical Insight

The regulator's programme director for safer gambling, Helen Rhodes, says of the initiative:

“Gaining a better understanding of the impact of gambling on children and young people is a key priority for the Commission. This newly released framework will provide critical insight into the range of harms that young people in Britain can experience and will help greatly in concentrating the National Strategy’s prevention and education initiatives where they will have the most impact.”

GambleAware’s director of research and evaluation, Clare Wyllie, added that this framework is designed, primarily, to guide and focus research and action to reduce gambling harms in young people and children.

“We encourage other researchers to build further evidence to develop the framework, so together we can move faster and go further to reduce gambling harms,” concluded Wyllie.

Source:

“GC to improve monitoring of gambling harm in minors”, igamingbusiness.com, May 3, 2019.