In early 2020 Vita CA was hired to do a rapid review of gambling blocking software, from a user perspective, by Gamban, one of the leading tech-start-ups in the field.
In this initial review, it became clear that there is a large gap between the different blocking software available in terms of consumer, technical, and safety standards. The gap was large enough to warrant safeguarding, data protection and ethical concerns regarding certain products and the organisations that provide them. Of course, this would be concerning for any product marketed to the public. However, it is particularly so given that this product is for people experiencing vulnerabilities and mental health difficulties.
The purpose of such self-exclusion tools is to enable a person experiencing difficulties with gambling to prevent themselves from having access to the opportunity to gamble.
There is little research on gambling self-exclusion in general and next to no evidence on blocking software specifically. As a result, little is understood about the 'consumer journey', how it empowers users in their recovery and its impact - or how it might develop to meet people's needs further. In addition, little is known of its use in relation to or combination with other forms of self-exclusion or support. To remedy this, Gamban reached out to us to collect user stories and feedback data to evidence the consumer journey and Gamban's impact.
Additionally, self-exclusion, including through blocking software, is increasingly becoming a core tool for people who struggle with gambling. Therefore, it was clear a need existed for a quality standards framework to ensure that (vulnerable) consumers are protected and can access the best quality tools to help them.
The development of such a framework needed to be done in collaboration with users of the software and the software companies themselves. Gamban, as the leading blocking software in terms of previous reviews, offered to help by facilitating access to their users, input from the point of view of software developers and by funding the project. Other blocking software providers were also invited to comment on the framework, and a wider group of people with gambling problems, beyond Gamban users, were also engaged to ensure the framework is fit for purpose for the market as a whole.
Engagement with Gamban's users was already planned as part of the impact review, and utilising the planned engagement to inform the quality standards would be both cost-effective and allow us to work at pace.
As such, we embarked on the creation of two pieces of work:
Using a mix-method approach with surveys, focus groups and individual interviews, we built a deep understanding of the views and experiences of Gamban's users.
We broke the information down into four categories:
We used the findings to build a set of recommendations ranging from ways to tailor information for users to communicate better with them to what tools were the most requested from the users and how they wanted these implemented.
We used the evidence we had gathered to develop a quality framework, based on the framework used in the government's quality regulation for health and social care, as gambling blocking software should be seen as a health intervention. For more information, see the attached Impact Report and Quality Framework.
