Young People’s Gambling Harm Prevention Programme Exceeds First-year Targets

YGAM and GamCare have surpassed the first-year targets for their joint Young People’s Gambling Harm Prevention Programme, despite significant challenges imposed by the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.

Figures released by YGAM show that the education charity trained 2906 practitioners in 2020 (up from its original target of 2592). With this training, those practitioners have reached an impressive 184,700 young people to provide vital educational sessions on the harms associated with gambling and gaming (up from a target of 170,300).

In addition, GamCare has trained 4185 professionals who work with young people and delivered educational workshops directly to 3947 young people. With just over two months left of their first year of delivery, GamCare has already exceeded training targets by almost 3000 people to date.

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YGAM and GamCare accelerated the digital transformation of their resources to enable them to deliver their workshops online throughout successive lockdowns. These resources continue to be available to anyone that works with young people, including teachers and youth workers.

“I am extremely proud of the enormous success we have already seen from the programme. As 2020 unfolded, we saw the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as an invitation to develop YGAM’s digital capacity in all areas of our work. Although this was done as a response to the crisis, the effect has been significantly advantageous for our education programme,” Lee Willows, Founder and Chief Executive of YGAM, said.