Gambling and Gaming: What a Foster Carer Can Actually Do

You probably will not see this one coming. Nothing to smell on the breath, nothing in a coat pocket, no particular hour of the night when it happens. A twelve-year-old can lose forty pounds on a wet Tuesday afternoon inside a game you helped him download, and the only trace is a line on a card statement a fortnight later. This guide covers what the law actually says, what you would notice in your own house, and what to do about the device without taking it off him.

Please note: this is general information about the law in Great Britain and about where to get help, not personal legal, financial or medical advice. Figures and legal positions are correct at 6 November 2026, and come from the Gambling Commission’s Young People and Gambling 2025 and the Gambling Act 2005.

What the law says, and where it stops

The Gambling Act 2005 does not use the word child the way you do. Section 45 says a “child” is anyone under 16 and a “young person” is someone aged 16 or 17. That matters, because section 48 says “A young person commits an offence if he gambles”, with lotteries, football pools and private bets among the exceptions. A fourteen-year-old who gambles commits no offence at all.

The weight of the law sits on adults. Section 46 says “A person commits an offence if he invites, causes or permits a child or young person to gamble”, and inviting includes deliberately sending a child gambling advertising. The question the law asks is not what the child did. It is who let it happen.

The ages are less tidy than most people expect:

• 18 for betting, casino games, bingo, online gambling and all Category A, B and C gaming machines.
• 18 for all National Lottery products, scratchcards included, since 1 October 2021.
• 16 for a ticket in a small society lottery, the sort of raffle a club or a church runs. The Gambling Commission’s guidance says those may only be sold by, and to, people aged 16 or over.
• No minimum age at all for Category D machines. The Commission’s guidance to licensing authorities states that “there is no minimum age for players of category D machines”. Those are the penny pushers and claw grabs in seaside arcades and family entertainment centres.

In May 2024 the government said it would close that last gap, with “an age limit of 18 and over for the use of ‘cash-out’ Category D slot-style gaming machines” and a new criminal offence of letting an under-18 use one. Two years on, the Commission’s guidance still records no minimum age, so treat it as announced rather than law. The law’s line is 18. A child’s line is whichever machine is nearest the door.

Most of it does not look like gambling

One figure changes how carers think about this. The Gambling Commission found that 30 per cent of 11 to 17 year-olds had spent their own money on gambling in the previous 12 months. The commonest things they spent it on were arcade gaming machines such as penny pushers or claw grabs (21 per cent), a bet for money between friends or family (14 per cent), and cards played for money (5 per cent). The proportion experiencing problems with their gambling was 1.2 per cent, statistically stable against 1.5 per cent in 2024.

Read that list again. The most common form of gambling among children in Britain is legal, costs a pound a go, and happens on a family day out with you stood beside them holding the cup of coins. Betting apps come far lower down.

The other half of this sits inside games, which is why it overlaps so heavily with everything in our guide to online safety and a foster child. A loot box is a sealed box you pay to open: extra weapons, a car, a character, and you do not know which until the money has gone. Skins are the cosmetic items players trade and sometimes bet against each other. Neither counts as gambling under British law. The government’s 2022 response to its call for evidence found an association between buying loot boxes and problem gambling but no established causal link, so it chose not to legislate.

What exists instead is industry guidance, coordinated by the trade body Ukie and published on 18 July 2023. It asks games companies to stop under-18s buying paid loot boxes without a parent’s consent, to disclose the odds clearly, to be lenient about refunds, and to default children’s accounts to a spending limit of zero. Which means a refund request is not cheek. It also means the protection depends on a company choosing to apply it. Free to download is a price, not the absence of one.

What you would actually notice

Money is the obvious trail, and the hardest to follow when a child has their own allowance and a phone. More telling than the amount is the chasing. A child who loses twenty pounds on a Saturday and shrugs is having a bad afternoon. A child who needs it back by Friday is somewhere else, and the urgency is the thing to watch.

Alongside it, the things our own training material lists:

• possessions quietly sold, or new things they cannot account for
• borrowing, or taking money that was not theirs
• school slipping, or unexplained absences
• pulling away from the people they usually like being around
• restlessness, and lying about where the money went

None of these means gambling on its own. Teenagers sell their trainers for all sorts of reasons.

Write it down as it happens, with dates. One afternoon of borrowed money reads as a bad week. Four entries over a month read as a pattern, and the pattern is what gets a referral taken seriously. Record what happened, not what you think the child is.

Our training material notes that children who have had a difficult start can lean towards risk-taking. Take that as a reason to pay attention, not a diagnosis. Our guide to understanding trauma and attachment covers why a child might be drawn to something that pays out unpredictably, and what you are seeing may be closer to a child having trouble coping than to an addiction.

Set the controls, not an argument about the console

Here we part company with our own training sheet, which suggests removing the Xbox, the phone and the tablet to give a child a break. That is usually the wrong move. For a child in care a phone is how he talks to his mum and his social worker, so confiscating it costs him a great deal and solves nothing. The money was never in the handset. It was on the account, so go after the account.

• Take your card off the console, the app store and the game. Pay with gift cards instead, so the ceiling is set before he starts.
• Set his account spending limit to zero, turn off saved-card purchasing, and switch on purchase approval so every payment needs your yes.
• Check the platform’s refund policy, then ask. Companies were asked to be lenient about this, and plenty are.

Then talk about it, clumsily rather than not at all. Ask what the game costs rather than whether he has been gambling: the first gets an answer, the second gets a shrug. Be clear that the money on screen is real. And look at your own habits while you are there. A child who watches an adult check the football coupon every Saturday has learned what is ordinary in this house.

Tell your supervising social worker early. Week three beats week twelve, every time, and nobody at the agency will think less of you for ringing about a card statement.

Where to get help:

• The National Gambling Helpline, 0808 8020 133, run by GamCare. Free, 24 hours a day, all year, and the best first call whatever the child’s age.
• The National Centre for Gaming Disorders, an NHS clinic for people in England aged 13 and over who have difficulty controlling their video game use. Family and professionals can refer, and it runs workshops for carers of 13 to 16 year-olds.
• Childline, 0800 1111, free, for the child to ring themselves.

You won’t have to do this alone

None of this is a test you pass alone. Your supervising social worker is the first call, there is an out-of-hours service for the evening a bill lands at nine o’clock, and training on online safety and money comes with the job. GLF is a small London agency, so the person who answers the phone already knows your household. If this is more about how a child feels than what they spend, start with our guide to supporting a foster child’s mental health.

The practical side: our carers receive 479.50 pounds a week for a child under 11 and 507.50 pounds a week for a child aged 11 or over, paid per child for as long as they are with you, with an enhanced fee of roughly 100 to 200 pounds a week more where a child needs a higher level of support. Ofsted inspected us from 21 to 25 July 2025 and rated us Outstanding in all three judgements.

It is completely normal to have questions about all this, and you do not need to have worked any of it out before you ring.

Frequently asked questions

Is a child breaking the law if they gamble?

Under section 48 of the Gambling Act 2005 a young person, meaning someone aged 16 or 17, commits an offence by gambling, though lotteries, football pools and private bets are excepted. A child under 16 commits no offence. The law aims at adults and operators, not at children, so treat what you find as a welfare matter for your supervising social worker rather than a police matter.

A child in my care has spent hundreds of pounds inside a game. What should I do first?

Tell your supervising social worker the same day, and do not settle it quietly out of your own pocket. Then ask the platform for a refund: industry guidance asks games companies to be lenient about exactly this. Set the account spending limit to zero and remove any saved card before the next payday.

Are loot boxes gambling?

Not under British law. The government looked at this in 2022, found an association with problem gambling but no established causal link, and chose not to legislate. The safeguards are industry guidance rather than regulation, which is why a spending limit of zero on a child’s account protects him better than any rule currently does.