On 11 March, Forward was proud to participate in a conference presented by Breakeven in Southend-on-Sea to raise awareness of gambling-related harm as a public health concern, says Carwyn Gravell.
To help tackle this prevalence of gambling harm, we wanted to work with specialist partners and, in the East of England, we have developed a partnership with Breakeven who are the regional arm of the National Gambling Support Network. The work with Breakeven started a few years ago in Southend-on-Sea where Forward delivers the community drug and alcohol service, and where the commissioner also recognised the connection between gambling and substance misuse. In Southend, we now routinely ask our clients about gambling as part of our assessment and then refer them to Breakeven (who co-locate in the same building) for one-to-one support. We also run group sessions together including women’s groups. The approach with clients is to ‘keep gambling the conversation’, raising awareness and reducing stigma.
Building on this work in Southend, we also partner with Breakeven in our prison services in the region where we deliver mental health support (talking therapies) alongside substance misuse services. Most recently we have run ‘cross training’ with Breakeven where staff from both organisations share their mutual expertise, further raising awareness and improving referral rates. This lays the foundation to expand our partnership across the East, including our substance misuse services in East Kent, Thurrock and Medway.
Thanks to the work of Breakeven and many other organisations who took part in the conference, many more people are recognising the nature and extent of gambling-related harm and – crucially – many more people are stepping forward for vital support. But there’s more to do. A new levy on the gambling industry comes into effect in October, which will raise £100m annually to fund treatment, prevention and research, enabling Breakeven and others to continue their work. Guidance was also recently published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence on gambling harm, which included recommendations for health and social care providers to start asking their service users about gambling and to refer people for specialist assessment and treatment. Forward welcomes this guidance and are pleased to have already embedded this approach in Southend.
The conference was a fitting celebration of all we have achieved to date with Breakeven, and the launchpad for further work to come. The conference was also noteworthy for the presence of many members of Southend-on-Sea’s public health commissioning team, demonstrating their enlightened recognition of the importance of gambling-related harm as a public health concern. More local authorities now need to follow Southend’s lead and to start implementing an integrated approach to commissioning which recognises the prevalence of gambling-related harm alongside other public health concerns.
This blog was originally published by the Forward Trust. You can read the original post here.
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