Past events

This session will go through a novel approach in research to show how gambling expenditure and harm can be objectively measured in bank data. Electronically-recorded gambling expenditure (e.g., in online and mobile gambling) can be retrieved from bank data, as well as relevant harm outcomes across financial (e.g., payday loans), social (e.g., spend on social activities) and health (e.g., spend on prescriptions, mortality) domains to provide information and knowledge. Dr Phillip Newall is one of the authors of this research.

This course is open to all Gambler's Help managers and staff, this includes local Gambler’s Help, Aboriginal Communities Gambling Awareness Program, CALD Gambler’s Help services and prevention workers. It is ideal for new staff members as it provides a good introduction to gambling in Victoria and an overview to the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation. There are seven online modules to complete followed by a webinar.

Learn how to detect early warning signs of an escalating situation, strategies to avoid escalation triggers and understand the human behaviour when angry, and how to implement de-escalation skills in this training session.

CPD points available: 6

This event is hosted by FCVic and registration will require logging onto their webpage.

This two-hour workshop faciliated by The Black Dog Institute will help participants to understand how to manage stress and change in the workplace. It will unpack what stress is, knowing your stress signatures and how to manage it, dealing with change and uncertainty, and tools and techniques to practice mindfulness to improve wellbeing in the workplace.

This webinar will present findings from a Foundation-led research project which gathered detailed information from Gambler’s Help counselling staff about their experiences, and that of their clients, on telehealth counselling during COVID-19. Presented by Dr Gabi Bryne, the session will cover topics such as the identified benefits and challenges of telehealth counselling, telehealth versus in-person counselling, and the way forward.

This online training session will provide an overview of the key functions of the GH Connect system, specifically related to therapeutic counsellors, financial counsellors and practitioners (CALD services).

Please note: This training is more suited for new starters. Experienced staff who have questions or want to refresh their existing knowledge are welcome to attend, but are also warmly encouraged to contact IT Support with their specific queries.

This presentation will outline evidence on how common loot boxes are in popular video games in Australia and examine survey research on the relationships between loot box use, gambling problems and harm.

The presentation will provide an update of the Australian Communications and Media Authority's (ACMA) activities to disrupt illegal offshore gambling - highlighting some of the new enforcement actions they have undertaken, such as website blocking, as well as the campaigns they have rolled out to influence consumer choices. It will also look at the results from the monitoring of the restrictions on gambling advertising in live sport as well as touching on where things are at with the implementation of the National Self-Exclusion Register.

Professional video gaming competitions, known as esports, are becoming increasingly popular worldwide and are particularly attractive to children, adolescents, and young adults. As with traditional sports, opportunities to gamble on esports have emerged over the last decade. This presentation will provide an overview of esports, how it converges with gambling, research findings to date on esports betting and related video game-related gambling projects, and the potential impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on esports betting.

Hosted by VACCHO, this cultural safety training program aims to enhance an organisation’s engagement with Aboriginal communities and their staff members, through building on employee’s cultural knowledge to improve the capacity of their work and its delivery to Aboriginal people. Participants will develop the knowledge and skills necessary to improve engagement with and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Through developing a greater understanding of Aboriginal health and wellbeing perspectives, participants will begin the process of critical self-reflection and are able to embed and apply learnings throughout their professional careers and personal lives.

The state-wide Alfred Mental Health and Gambling Harm Service is committed to providing a space and opportunity for Gambler’s Help staff to come together and support each other in a four-session video conference peer consultation series.

This series hopes to provide a forum for people to share collective knowledge, reflect on their work, gather ideas and support colleagues across Victoria.

These sessions will be conducted monthly in the last Thursday morning of each month, and commenced in August 2020. It is beneficial to register for this block of sessions planned for 27 August, 24 September, 29 October and 26 November.

For financial counsellors: This session will teach effective ways of dealing with clients affected by mental health conditions and comorbidities including a focus on alcohol and other drugs.

The session will cover understanding the underlying issues of certain difficult behaviours, setting boundaries in client sessions and controlling the conversation, building rapport quickly with your clients and working more effectively with clients displaying difficult behaviours

Three CPD points can be awarded upon completion of this webinar. To satisfy your professional obligations - and to be awarded points for attendance - you are required to participate in the entire session.

Event registration will require you to log in to FCVIC's webpage.

In this presentation, findings from two exploratory studies of gambling will be shared. The studies were initiated and conducted by Mallee District Aboriginal Services and Gippsland and East Gippsland Aboriginal Services, in collaboration with La Trobe University. 50 Aboriginal people in regional Victoria were interviewed to identify benefits and harms associated with gambling and what community members thought should be done in response.

Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children and other Australian Institute of Family Studies research into sports betting among young Australians, this seminar will cover gambling behaviours among teenagers and young adults, the experience of harm among adolescents, peer and parental influences and other factors.

Learn more about the Code of Ethics that apply to financial counsellors. Learn how to navigate the needs of your clients, and your personal moral obligations. This will be an interactive session exploring different scenarios. This course is designed for all levels of experience.

Learn about trauma and how it can affect your clients, learn about trauma-informed care and how to apply principles from this practice when working with individuals to build a sense of safety, control and empowerment through strengths-based interventions.

Learn about online gambling, as well as working with refugees and asylum seekers in this online webinar. This session will cover topics such as the support available to refugees and asylum seekers, residency statuses and what a refugee lawyer does. It will also discuss the rise of online gambling, ways to identify online gambling from bank statements, and regulatory frameworks to address online gambling.

Dr. Gabriele Byrne will discuss findings from her PhD research, 'Preventing problem gambling relapse through social inclusion', which demonstrated how an innovative group program addressed two identified relapse risk factors – lack of social connectedness, and lack of leisure substitution – not only reduced the participants temptation to gamble, but at the same time it showed significant improvement in areas of social connectedness, self-efficacy, and mental health.

The Foundation will be joined by representatives from GVC Holdings, the owner of such Australian sports betting operators as Ladbrokes and Neds. This webinar will outline the operation of exclusion, deposit limit and other RG features offered and recently implemented to inform gambling professionals of the information and support for those experiencing gambling harm that is provided.

The Centre for Innovative Justice (CIJ) will look at the benefits gleaned from their Financial Counselling pilot, run in collaboration with the Mental Health Legal Centre's (MHLC) Inside Access program. The webinar will include a discussion of the intersection between gambling and offending first identified by the CIJ in 2017, as well as the steps which the CIJ took to respond to this work in seconding a Financial Counsellor into the existing integrated practice at MHLC.