Lottery company Lottoland has launched a new gambling awareness programme, aimed at parents and children in Gibraltar.
The programme has been named P.A.R.E.N.T. with the initials referring to what the company has described as the six key aspects of behaviour required to protect children from gambling online: parenting, awareness, responsibility, environment, nurturing and trust.
The programme has been developed through a partnership with the Gibraltar Government’s Department for Education, and has drawn on contributions from teachers and a number of non-governmental organisations, having begun with focus group discussions.
Speaking about the initiative, the chief executive of Lottoland, Nigel Birrell, said that it would help to both educate and protect a new generation:
Together, we will provide young people today with the resources they need to ensure they are empowered to ‘switch off’ when they need to, and ‘switched on’ enough to enjoy all that online gaming has to offer with the self-awareness required to stay safe and sound at all times.”
No online limits
The programme was set up following a survey of young people, commissioned by Lottoland, which found that nearly half of children in the UK are not giving limits on the amount of time they are allowed to spend online, and one in five children were allowed to play online games with no restrictions.
The scheme will include training sessions starting in 2019, which will be administered by the Young Gamblers Education Trust (YGAM) working alongside primary and secondary school teachers. It is likely to be spread to other jurisdictions over the coming months, through other members of the
Lotto Betting Association (ELBA), which was co-founded by Lottoland.
Last year Lottoland was fined by the Advertising Standards Authority for failures in the way that it advertised its lottery-based products, one of a number of companies to fall foul of an increasingly restrictive regulatory regime in the UK and across Europe.
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