MLA Welcomes Department of Health Endorsement of NICE Guideline on Gambling-related Harms
Responding to the news that the Department of Health has endorsed the NICE (National Institute on Clinical Excellence) Guideline on Gambling-Related Harms, Philip McGuigan MLA Chair of the All Party Group (APG) on Reducing Harm Related to Gambling stated:
“I welcome the decision by the Department of Health to endorse the NICE Guideline on Gambling and look forward to its early implementation in the local health service. We need to treat gambling as a public health issue in this region. This guideline provides much needed information to commissioners, providers, healthcare professionals and social care practitioners on how to identify, assess, support and treat those experiencing gambling-related harms, their families and affected others.”
“The Department of Health has acknowledged that future commissioning of the services recommended in the guideline, to reduce gambling-related harms, are dependent on significant investment or a strategic change to services. We urgently need to see this region get funding from a levy on gambling to provide the necessary resources for this crucial work.”
The Health Minister previously told the Assembly that “funding for gambling harm services should be clearly seen as new or additional funding that does not, in any way, disadvantage core mental health and addiction services and their service users”. Additional funding can be provided through the introduction of an industry levy on gambling operators, as provided for under the Betting, Gaming, Lotteries and Amusements (Amendment) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022. And the Executive Ministers for Health, Communities and Education have also written to the British Government asking that the North receives a share of the statutory levy on gambling operators recently introduced in Britain.
The guideline says that healthcare professionals and social care practitioners in all settings should ask people about gambling, “even if they have no obvious risk factors for gambling-related harm”, and provides advice on how best to ask about gambling. This aligns with one of the recommendations of the Assembly All Party Group’s recent inquiry report Public Health Approaches to Gambling-Related Harms in NI. The APG called for screening programmes to be introduced across all health and social care services in the North to help identify and assist problem gamblers reluctant to seek support. There are however currently no commissioned gambling treatment services in our healthcare system.
The All Party Group has heard evidence on multiple occasions that there is a shortage of psychologists and psychiatrists working in addiction services across the North. In order to provide the recommended level of support and treatment to all those who need it, the Department must address the ongoing workforce crisis in addiction and mental health services in NI.