A province wide needs assessment of service providers : a summary report on compulsive gambling in Ontario

Abstract

In November 1994, the Ministry of Health announced that monies would be allocated to community organizations, namely, the Canadian Foundation on Compulsive Gambling, the Addiction Research Foundation, and the Donwood Institute to help deal with problem gamblers. ARF's role would be to develop a treatment curriculum and to train staff of mental health, family counselling and addiction agencies to identify and treat problem gamblers. Before developing a training curriculum, it was important to ask the service providers of Ontario for their input. The primary objective of the needs assessment was to determine if and how problem gamblers were presenting to community agencies, how the service providers were dealing with problem gamblers and what type of training would be most beneficial for agency staff in relation to gambling issues.