The Swedish National Audit Office is calling for stronger coordination between the Public Health Agency, the National Board of Health and Welfare and the county administrative boards when it comes to improving problem gambling support in Sweden.
Riksrevisionen underpinned the urgent need for Folkhälsomyndigheten and Socialstyrelsen to elevate their collaboration to support the Riskdag in reducing the negative impact of excessive gambling.
The National Audit Office emphasised that urgency is crucial as gambling problems have increased among children and young people.
High quality but failing to meet needs
The Public Health Agency’s and the National Board of Health and Welfare’s knowledge and support on gambling harm were described as ‘high quality’, but failing to meet the ‘municipalities’ needs for practical guidance to detect and prevent gambling problems, especially in children and young people’ as such support is ‘currently lacking’.
There is also a desperate need to update the knowledge around support for treatment, which is said to be from the National Board of Health and Welfare is said to be from 2018.
As such, the National Audit Office is asking for improvements across the sector ‘to develop knowledge support with methods and working methods that are based to a greater extent on proven experience where research is lacking’.
In addition, work also needs to be ‘integrated more clearly with the overall work against harmful use and addictions’.
Key next steps
The National Audit Office has laid out recommendations for the government, for the Public Health Agency and for the National Board of Health and Welfare to improve gambling harm support.
Just one recommendation has been listed for the government: to ‘consider including questions about gambling problems in ventures in related areas’.
Five recommendations have been made for the Public Health Agency:
- Develop methods based on proven experiences to a greater extent – municipalities receive more practical guidance for detecting and preventing gambling problems, especially for children and young people.
- Drive the national coordination for gambling – knowledge of participating actors is translated into concrete and coordinated knowledge support for the municipalities.
- Develop indicators for children and young people’s gambling and gambling problems in the national monitoring system.
- Systematically consider the needs within gambling when the authority makes overall priorities regarding which knowledge support should be developed within the ANDTS (alcohol, drugs, doping and tobacco policy and gambling for money) area.
- Make more use of synergies between the national coordination for gambling and ANDTS.
Two recommendations have been pitched for the National Board of Health and Welfare:
- Develop knowledge support for gambling problems, especially regarding recommendations for children and young people.
- Incorporate knowledge support for gambling problems into the national guidelines for abuse and addiction to promote collective work against ANDTS.
