Following the latest recommendation from the Government to limit all non-essential social contact, the Young Gamers and Gamblers Education Trust has decided that all staff will work from home remotely as of today (Tuesday, 17th March 2020).
As a responsible employer, we need to balance our duties to staff, clients and our partners. Based on the current information, we believe that social distancing measures are likely to delay the spread of the virus (i.e ‘flattening the curve’ and reducing risk for the most vulnerable in society) and help protect our staff, partners and clients.
Following consultation with our Senior Management Team and Chair of Trustees, and with effect from Tuesday, 17th March 2020, YGAM is taking the following steps:
- All staff will work from home, using digital and video technology to continue our work with partners.
- We will continue to work with clients and collaborators to ensure we continue to deliver high quality work, flexing our approaches where required, and doing what we can to implement social distancing measures.
- Our team will not host any large gatherings or events for the foreseeable future – unless these can be done virtually.
- Our staff will be supported to attend externally organised events or meetings, participating online or by phone.
This has not been an easy decision for us to make, however our priority will always be the health and safety of our employees, partners and the people we serve.
All meetings, activities and events will be suspended from today until further notice and we will endeavour to rearrange as many of these as we can as soon as we are able to do so. We will communicate directly with people to confirm these details.
Once this suspension ends we will work tirelessly to ensure our programmes return back to normal and we remain confident that in the meantime we can continue to help you inform, educate and safeguard the young people you work with around the potential harms caused by gaming and gambling.
These are indeed uncertain times and we have no idea at present how long this situation will continue. If you have any queries or would like further information, please contact Lee Willows, email: lee@ygam.org or Kev Clelland, email: kev@ygam.org.
KEV CLELLAND
Operations Director
