A diversity of perspectives on gambling harms
Our Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP) discuss how valuable it is to hear fresh perspectives on gambling harms from different cultural and demographic groups.
Posted 10 May 2022 by Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP)
As members of the Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP) we have the opportunity to contribute independent advice to the Gambling Commission based on my personal experiences of gambling harms. As a panel, we have recently been exploring ways that we can hear perspectives from different groups of people in order to better inform our advice to the Gambling Commission.
We chose to pilot this approach by setting up a discussion workshop with people from the South East Asian community, with support from partners from Ara (opens in new tab) and Beacon Counselling Trust (opens in new tab). These two organisations run an award-winning project (opens in new tab) exploring gambling harms in Asian communities, and helped us reach into the South East Asian community to find people who were happy to take part in the workshop.
It was really valuable to hear fresh perspectives on topics that LEAP discuss regularly, such as our shared concerns around the proliferation of gambling advertising and the location of land-based gambling venues.
Furthermore, the workshop also introduced us to factors that we had not previously considered as a group. For example, we spoke about the challenge of protecting people from gambling harms who don’t speak English as their first language, and who therefore cannot always easily engage with self-exclusion information or preventative messaging.
During the workshop, we were keen to explore how best to reach into the South East Asian community to ensure we heard their views and experiences more regularly. It was invaluable to hear their suggestions for informal ad hoc listening groups, which we are keen to explore further.
Our session benefited enormously from the contribution of faith leaders who generously gave up their time to share experiences from their communities. Together we reflected on the experience of gambling disorder in the context of faith-based communities and how this impacts recovery. Again, this offered a new dimension to LEAP’s thinking about gambling-harms.
Following this successful first step, we would like to hear more from different cultural and demographic groups. We will be working to support the Gambling Commission to achieve this in future months.