Council Announces Expanded Problem Gambling Helpline

In anticipation of increased demand for help from problem gamblers and their families the CCGP will on February 1, 2007 expand their call referral network to provide 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week, year-round services from specially trained gambling counselors.

"We promise you will never get a busy signal, there will always be a live person taking your call and offering hope and help," says the Executive Director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of Pennsylvania, Jim Pappas.

"This will allow us to refer callers to the closest Gamblers Anonymous, GamAnon or gambling counselor statewide, no matter what time of day, no matter how many callers are calling in at one time," stated Joanna Franklin, Coordinator of Education and Training for the CCGP. The CCGP was incorporated in 1985 and has worked to offer prevention, education, referral and public awareness information on Problem and Compulsive Gambling.

The CCGP has received funds from the Pennsylvania Lottery since 1997 to operate the Helpline and the CCGP has partnered with Philadelphia Park, Penn National Gaming and The Meadows Inc. to offer problem gambling helpline, prevention, education, training and awareness programs statewide.

"This past year we took about 18,000 calls from gamblers and family members seeking help," said Pappas. Over 11,000 of these calls came to the state-funded number from the State Problem Gambling Helpline, 1-800-848-1880, the balance from our two nationally contracted lines for problem Gambling 1- 800 GAMBLER and 1-800-522-4700. This combination of Problem Gambling Helplines assure callers who may live in Pennsylvania but work in Maryland, New Jersey, West Virginia, New York or Ohio of complete, seamless, 24/7 call coverage.

"Our partnership with the National Council on Problem Gambling, and their national call center in Shreveport, La., will assure excellent coverage, with trained and experienced operators, state-of-the-art data collection on our callers and the best of local and national resources made available to every caller," said Franklin. No longer dependent on small staff and occasional volunteers, the new service expands the entire in-state network and links to the services in neighboring states as well.

"We are very excited and grateful to our Board of Directors, the Lottery and our industry partners to give us the go-ahead with this expansion of services as a priority even without increased funding at this time," said Franklin.

Callers to the Helpline will hear a caring voice ask about what kind of assistance they may need. Once the need has been defined the call specialists will use the CCGP resource directory to find the Gamblers Anonymous, GamAnon, or professional counseling program that is closest or the best fit for their needs.

"As time goes by we will add more and more service providers to our resource directory. Our goal is to be sure that all callers have trained and experienced treatment services and self-help services well within their reach," said Pappas.