The Gambling Education Toolkit – now available online for free

Have you checked out our Gambling Education Toolkit yet?

With the official launch having taken place on the 14^th of November at the YouthLink Annual Conference, Fast Forward is thrilled to have a dedicated space on our new website for this toolkit, making all its resources fully accessible and downloadable for free!

The website has been designed for teachers, youth workers and practitioners working with young people, with a focus on education, harm reduction and prevention. It can also be adapted and used in a variety of formal and informal education settings.

Users can choose from a variety of activities and materials to talk about gambling and problem gambling with young people. Browsing through all the resources and picking the most suitable ones for each occasion is made simple by the different categories available, such as the learning outcomes or length of the session that a practitioner wishes to plan. Examples of session plans and guidelines are also available, as well as clear links to the Curriculum for Excellence and to the Youth Work Outcomes. Whilst our focus in on raising awareness and early intervention, we also provide a dedicated space listing other agencies and programmes that can offer further support to those facing gambling-related issues.

We’ve been delighted to hear the many positive comments we’ve received so far, including feedback from practitioners who throughout the last few months had the chance of testing and using the draft version of the toolkit in their own work with young people:

“I think the Toolkit has been well constructed and has the right amount of information in it to give practitioners and young people a sound understanding of problem gambling. I feel that the Toolkit would be useful for high school teachers for Personal and Social Education”

“The Toolkit is great and it was well needed in education – I think raising awareness of this topic is important as it’s not something discussed often.”

“This was a good pack that gave different activities and facts about gambling. We were able to pick various ones to fit in a 45 min session. The group found this fun and engaging while gaining knowledge about gambling.”

Catherine Calderwood (Chief Medical Officer for Scotland) and Gerda Reith (University of Glasgow) also wrote two introductory statements to our Gambling Education Toolkit, and we thank them for their support in drawing attention to the fact that “gambling harms must be at the heart of our response to reducing adverse childhood experiences, as well as to addressing the sorts of wider inequalities that affect health and wellbeing”.

We thank the NHS Lothian and NHS Health Fundation, whose initial funding allowed us to start the pilot for this project back in 2014, and GambleAware, our current funder, who enabled it to grow to a national project.

The Gambling Education Toolkit was presented with a poster at the 5^th Harm Minimisation Conference, held by GambleAware in London on the 6^th and 7^th of December. Not only was this the perfect occasion to share our work with other projects working across the UK, but it was also an incredibly valuable opportunity to hear from various experts in the field discussing the harm caused by gambling to young people, as well as its links to gaming and to sports betting – you can see the programme here.

Please don’t forget that Fast Forward offers free CPD sessions to teachers and youth workers who wish to further develop their skills and knowledge about addressing gambling-related issues with young people. If you work in a high school or other youth services in Scotland and wish to receive a training input from us, please don’t hesitate to get in touch to discuss this further.