The Consumer Voices project is a Health Promotion Community Education program with the aims:
- To increase community awareness and education about problem gambling and impacts
- To create an informed and empathetic community to reduce stigma
- To reduces barriers to support for those affected by problem gambling
- To promote self-help and professional support to those affected
- To value the experience and role of consumers (those affected by problem gambing) in being peer leaders in individual recovery and community education
Over 500,000 people in Australia have a moderate or severe gambling problem and for every person struggling with a gambling disorder 5-10 other people are negatively affected including family, friends, employers (Productivity Commission Report 2010).This equates to over 5 million people in Australia and 2.5 million in NSW.
This project aims to provide a trained group of peer educators to raise community awareness of the issue of problem gambling. Our bureau of peer educators are trained and coordinated through the Gambling Impact Society (NSW) Inc. to provide awareness training and community education from the perspective of people who have been directly negatively impacted by problem gambling but also recovered and able to share their story.
Since May 2012, over 2329 participants have attended a Consumer Voices session and over 137 different community organisations and service agencies have received this community education program. This includes Health and Welfare professionals, community support groups, gambling venue staff, service groups such as Probus, Rotary and range of youth groups.
