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Gambling licensees have generated nearly £10,000 for a website including a specialist online counselling portal for sufferers of gambling addiction - but so far no one from Jersey has actually used the service.
The Jersey Gambling Commission requires all licensees - of which there are more than 70 in Jersey ranging from bookmakers to pubs with gaming machines - to pay into a dedicated Social Responsibility Fund.
Last year, the Island regulator collected £64,109 for the Fund, up from £48,581 in 2015, which Chief Executive Dr Jason Lane said would help to fund, “…education, treatment, and research around problem gambling.”
The majority of the Fund is used for literature distributed within betting shops and "post-marking where people can get help", but a proportion - £9,738 last year - is ring-fenced for a dedicated website, gamblingtherapy.je.
“The website is specifically Jersey-focused. The benefit of that is that it is totally anonymous and that people can go online and read through the various different sections,” Dr Lane explained.
Pictured: Dr Jason Lane said that no Jersey people had used the Gambling Therapy website's online counselling service.
However, while the website had seen a 12.37% increase in traffic from the previous year with 436 visits from Jersey, Dr Lane told Express that the Commission were still awaiting their first Island user of its online counselling service, which allows sufferers of addiction to engage in one-to-one dialogue with a therapist through the site.
“We haven’t actually had anyone using the counselling service. That could be a good thing, because people don’t feel they need it, but it’s important that we provide it and it’s important that people get to know that it’s there in case they feel that they would like to use it,” Dr Lane explained.
While no figures relating to the amount of people suffering from gambling addiction in Jersey are publicly held, GambleAware statistics for the UK show that as many as one in 90 could be suffering from the problem. Instances of problem gambling tend to be more prevalent among those with low incomes, with men five times more likely than women to be affected.
Some islanders could already be taking steps by themselves to stop gambling, however. The Gambling Commission’s 2016 annual report showed 136 incidences of individuals asking for themselves to be permanently excluded from licensed premises.
Pictured: There were over 130 reports of islanders asking for themselves to be barred from gambling establishments last year.
Dr Lane commented that the Commission were not complacent, and were currently working with Health and Social Services about how the Fund could be better used to assist their work in treating addiction. In future, they hope to be able to better equip counsellors to deal specifically with gambling issues.
“Jersey has quite a high instance of drug and alcohol addiction and so [Health and Social Services] quite rightly focus their resources on that, but what we’d also like to see is offering a Jersey-based service specifically for people with issues with gambling, and we’re discussing with them how we’re going to put that into effect,” he said.
“It’s still quite early on, but what we’re looking at is providing a training resource for local counsellors so that they get an insight and understanding in how to assist people with gambling problems as well as drugs and alcohol.”
For more information about Gambling Therapy, click here.
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