A new toolkit has been revealed at the University of Bristol that aims to help students deal with their problem gambling.
Designed by Benjamin Parker and Jordan White, graduates from the same university, the ‘From Freshers’ Week to Losing Streak’ toolkit is educational in nature, offering guidance, practical advice and acts as an awareness campaign for university staff to better understand gambling harms and offer improved support.
White remarked: “As well as strengthening access to support, we want students to reflect and question their own relationship with gambling, and feel empowered to have conversations with their friends about it.
“People only talk about the wins, not about the losses, and often wait until they are in crisis before seeking help. But there are resources available for people who want to feel more educated and informed on the topic.”
Both creators have described the toolkit as easily integratable into existing university infrastructure, acting as a single hub to collect information on specialist services and compulsive gambling disorders.
“Lots of my mates gambled, and I had a suspicion that it was happening all the time,” said toolkit co-founder Parker.
“When we investigated university student gambling and discovered how pervasive gambling harms are, we felt we had to develop a solution. There is a massive gap between the awareness of universities and the scale of the problem.”
Parker and White researched the topic thanks to their university’s Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms. They got £8,000 in funding from Runway – another University of Bristol initiative that subsidises student-led startups – and are now working with the Ara Recovery For All charity, which helps those suffering from gambling harms in the South West and Wales.
Perhaps obvious from its dedicated gambling harms hub, the University of Bristol has historically been heavily involved with research into problem gambling and reducing its societal impact.
The educational institution is vigilantly following the advertising space, with some of its researchers having previously submitted complaints to the UK Advertising Standards Authority, which the regulator has subsequently acted upon.
Lastly, readers will remember a wide-scale campaign from local councils last year that demanded more rights when it comes to licensing permits for land-based bookmakers within their jurisdictions.
Politicians like Paulette Hamilton, MP for Birmingham Edmonton, have previously raised concerns about the prevalence of betting shops in poverty-struck areas, basing their arguments on previous studies by the University of Bristol which concluded that such venues are 10 times more likely to be found in deprived towns than affluent areas.