The UK-facing initiative will focus on students aged between 15 and 18 and run across 200 secondary schools and colleges during the 2021-22 academic year, while resources will also be made available to parents and teachers.
The programme will feature a combination of online webinars and video content alongside face-to-face delivery. This will fuse lived experience stories from WHYSUP with Teen Tips’ online webinars, resources and information packs for secondary school aged children.
Sessions will be offered to UK state schools with the aim of increasing awareness around gambling harm, in order help to identify and mitigate the risks that problem gambling can create.
Program subject areas will include industry practices such as advertising, differing product risk profiles, pathways of support and how to identify the signs of harm in yourself and your classmates.
Epic, which will make its information app available to students, will also continue to work with independent schools on a privately funded basis.
“The workshops we deliver to this sector are crucial in educating young people on the damage that gambling and gaming can cause because despite being a vulnerable demographic, most are oblivious to the potential consequences of their actions,” Epic’s director of UK and rest of the world, Patrick Foster, said.
“Bringing in the expertise of WHYSUP, who have lived the desperation of gambling harm and other addictions first-hand, and Teen Tips, who are already working in a high number of UK schools and having a positive impact on the mental health and wellbeing of young people, is a powerful combination.
“We know that bringing them in to enhance the crucial message around gambling harm minimisation that we already deliver at EPIC is going to prevent an immeasurable number of people from falling into the same difficulties as so many before them.”
Original article: https://igamingbusiness.com/epic-risk-management-targets-teenagers-with-new-gambling-harm-education-programme/
