GambleAware awards £750,000 grant to Scottish youth problem-gambling initiative

GambleAware has announced the award of a £750,000 grant to Fast Forward, allowing the Scottish charity to spearhead a major youth problem-gambling initiative across Scotland for the next three years.

The funding will be used to develop a new gambling education hub, based on the Gambling Education Toolkit developed by Fast Forward in 2017.

This new hub aims to extend the scope and scale of gambling education, awareness training and support offered to organisations dealing with young people across Scotland.

Addressing the grant award, Dr. Jane Rigbye, director of education at GambleAware said the organisation was “impressed with the results Fast Forward have already achieved while working with us over the past three years, so we are delighted to be able to scale-up their work to make a real impact across the whole of Scotland.

“If the work continues to secure the positive, independent evaluations we’ve already seen, then we would hope to replicate this model in England and Wales as soon as practicable.”

One of the focuses of the program will be on further and higher education, with Fast Forward providing training and support to student support staff at key points throughout the academic year. The pilot for this project is already underway but will now be rolled out as a model across other universities across Scotland.

Alastair MacKinnon, Chief Executive of Fast Forward added: “Fast Forward’s goal as a charity is to enable young people to make informed choices about their well-being and to live healthier lifestyles.

“Ensuring all those who work with Scottish young people are empowered to offer advice about safer gambling and help those who need it find treatment could make a real difference to a generation with more opportunities to gamble than ever before.”