Peter1919

1 hour ago, NJCubScouter said:

Well, regardless of whether having a Chief Scout (or something similar) would be good for the BSA - and I am not convinced it would be - it is not going to happen because the CSE and other top guys at National would not want to be upstaged.  Kind of like James E. West in ancient times. 

Interesting.

In the UK the Chief Scout used to be the figurehead AND run the Association but about 15 years ago The Scout Association split the role into a firgurehead Chief Scout and a UK Chief Commissioner who runs the Association. People within Scouting in the UK still know who the UK CC is and are relatively excited to meet them and have them attend an event (more so adults than kids) but that is not their primary role which is overseeing the  Associaiton's stratergy and programme development and the wider national volunteer team. i dont think any UK CC would see the Chief Scout as upstaging them as opposed to fufilling their figurehead role.

I note that your National Presdient role has recently been renamed National Chair. Seems to me like the title of President of the BSA might have just been freed up  

18 minutes ago, NJCubScouter said:

Can you give some examples, not necessarily names that we on the other side of the pond probably would not recognize, but the kinds of fields they are in or something else to give us an idea of what kind of people these are.

A full list with their backgrounds is available on the Scout Association website at http://scouts.org.uk/about-us/ambassadors/ but a fair summary would be Olympians or Paralympians, Adventurers, TV and Radio presenters oh and Britain's only astronaut

Ok interesting where you guys have taken the discussion. So in the UK we don't just have Bear Grylls as Chief Scout we also have some more minor celebs as Scouting Ambassadors. Sometimes they do events by themselves other times the accompany Bear to things. What they all do is help get publicity for Scouting, we have been fairly succesful in the last 12 years or so on getting fairly regular national news coverage of Scouting, most usually on breakfast news programmes where they like a good news story, Part of the key to this success has been having a celebrity to hook the news item on and then pivoting that so that the youth members do the talking.

So you take a celebrity, get them to visit a large Scouting event such as a jamboree. This becomes a news item even if only on the local news. They then interview the celeb and some youth members as to what Scouting is about and in recent years this message has been about how we need more adult volunteers as we have more kids wanting to join Scouting than we have spaces for. This drip feed has helped to start to turn the public perception of what Scouting is when they see kids having fun at amazing Scout events.

Classic example of news coverage of a Scouting event visited by Bear http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/update/2017-07-30/thousands-in-kent-for-scout-jamboree/ NB the video at the bottom is what was broadcast on TV.

Oh and the exisitng members seem to love having Bear visit and this is the kids of stuff he can get up to when visiting an event (Steve Backshall is one of the Scouting Ambassadors I mentioned, he is a kids TV naturalist and adventurer)

37 minutes ago, blw2 said:

Whenever I think about those guys in national... the high paid ones... I don't think so much about over or under paid.  Hey, people are in high paid jobs leading all sorts of companies...but considering the pressure they are under, the hours they probably work (even when it looks to us like they are playing), maybe it aint' oh so bad.... I do get that it can be hard to swallow though from my perspective down in the lower end of the spectrum....

anyway, what I think about when I think of them is image of BSA, recruiting, etc...  I keep going back to Bear Grylls and his TV show.  I've heard the rumors about his cheating and faking survival situations.... but hey, he's out there in a very visible place doing some very adventuresome stuff that in theory at least scouts could do.  I still say that's the kind of folks the BSA needs in that leadership position...showing what scouts could do and routinely having fun.  Wouldn't it be great if you had a show with Bear or someone like him and a few scouts, instead of a celebrity.  (two deep compliant and all of that)...but doing some truly adventuresome stuff, maybe some quality one on one face to face interviews on mountain tops like Bear does in his show....

If those guys did more of that, don't you think membership numbers would be helped?  Would we generally be a bit more open to those high salaries for taht, instead of teh guy in the Board room all day?

Not sure if you are aware but Bear Grylls is actually the Chief Scout in the UK, he is just a figurehead he has no exectutive role at all. He does publicity events and getting around big Scouting Events meeting as many Scouts as possible in the weekends he gives up his time to do this in. He does all this as a volunteer, no salary or anything (The Scout Association do pay all his expenses including the hire of a helicopter to fly him around multiple events on the same weekend)

On 3/28/2018 at 5:42 PM, The Latin Scot said:

I myself actually lay my necker flat and then fold the edges in small, 1" folds until I have about 8" of triangled fabric left. Next I carefully bring it around my neck and smoothly bring up the slide, watching that it goes up without pulling in any weird places; I then adjust until everything looks neat and tidy

The sounds about right. The number of times I have to explain to our Scouts that is a neckerchief not a womans neck scarf and should be rolled neatly as you describe not be shoved through a woggle (slide) without rolling which ends up looking a bit like a napkin worn around your neck with a napkin ring.

I think they just look plain ridiculous and would look much better and smarter without them

8 hours ago, David CO said:

That would be great, if it were actually possible. Unfortunately, the employees are in control of BSA. The volunteers can't fire them.

Yes but the senior executives could decide to reduce the number of employees below them in order to protect their own high paying jobs in the long run. 

I would be very interested in a comparision between the ratio of employees to youth members in BSA and TSA

I know TSA has roughly 450 000 youth members and around 50 000 adult members. I would guestimate that there are under 1000 people employed in Scouting in total in the UK

I have read this whole thread and I must admit from my position as a UK Leader I find the number of professionals involved in BSA very surprising and quite baffling as to what they all do. In the UK The Scout Association employs relatively few people directly, almost all based at our national HQ or at HQ owned activity centres. Most Scout Counties employ 1 or two people for administrative support and if the County own a large enough campsite or activity centre they may employ staff to run these.

However for the most part UK Scouting is volunteer led and the volunteers are in charge of any employees not the other way round. The Scout Association does employ a Chief Executive but they run the business side of Scouting (The Scout Association owns Scout shops, has its own insurance brokerage and runs several activity centres). The volunteer UK Chief Commissioner runs Scouting in the UK, they set the strategy and direction in conjunction with the volunteer board of trustees. There are professional support staff based at HQ who are in charge of things like programme support etc but again they answer to volunteers not the other way around.

Info about how The Scout Association is structured locally can be found at http://scouts.org.uk/about-us/organisational-information/local-structure/ and nationally at http://scouts.org.uk/about-us/organisational-information/national-structure/ 

If BSA is facing drastically lower numbers due to The Church of LDS withdrawing then I really think they need to fundamentally look at their structure and decide if employing so many people is really justifiable and financially viable in the future. You really don't want to go down Scouts Canada's route of ever increasing membership fees imposed on a lower and lower number of youth members to the extent that the fees are so high it puts people of joining so affect numbers of youth members and so on in a vicious downwards spiral.

On 5/26/2018 at 9:04 PM, Gwaihir said:

If BSA becomes the same as Scouting in the UK, I'm out.  That's my breaking point.  

Why? Do you actually have any experience of Scouting in the UK? I am a UK Scouter and I think we run excellent Scouting, its different to BSA, with a lot less emphasis on ranks and advancement but its still Scouting.

B.P. had to deal with it almost from the start.  So he turned to Olave and asked her to come up with something.  That something, of course, was the Girl Guides and it eventually folded into the British Scouting program, just as a large percentage of other worldwide Scouting groups have joined the genders in some manner.

Just to pick up on this B.P. had his sister, Agnes, help set up the Girl Guides and after he married Olave she eventually took over as Chief Guide. Girl Guides did not eventually fold into the British Scouting Programme, Guides still exists completely separately to Scouts. The Scout Association admitted girls whilst the Guides did not and do not admit boys and did not merge with the Scouts in any way, in fact there are more Guides in the Uk than there are Scouts despite Scouts being open to both genders.

@@Peter1919But, one could say National could have handled things better the day Katrina Yeaw's application for Eagle Scout came acros their desk 25 years ago. 

I have never heard of Katrina Yeaw so I looked up what happened in her case and Wikipedia (ok not the most reliable source I admit) says she was denied entry to a  Boy Scout Troop for being a girl and her father filed a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America in 1995, accusing them of discrimination. The lawsuit was ultimately unsuccessful as BSA was determined not to be a business so is allowed to set its own membership criteria. So it does not appear there ever was an application for Eagle Scout in her name that came across National's Desk for them to have dealt with differently.

A lot of issues:

 

(1) Will the program work with girls?

(2) Will BSA honor the wish of units to stay Boys only?

(3) Do Scouters feel they can trust BSA national leadership anymore?

(4) Do individual scouters want to stay around and see if it works or go away?

(5) What will 'Family Camping" do to the Patrol Method?

As a UK Leader who has worked with both female and male Scouts (10-14) and Explorer Scouts (14 to 18) for over 12 years now then I would like to make clear that from my experience girls in Scouting are not so different from boys that they can't do exactly the same programme as boys and get just as much out of it. The girls that aren't into the sort of activities you run in Scouting will mostly not even join and those that do will soon leave when they realize it is not for them just the same as some boys do.

I think BSA have spectacularly mishandled this decision and announcement though. They have clearly failed to properly consult their volunteers on this. The process should have been much longer and more in depth with a two stage consultation on this. First stage should have been on "should we do this?", and the second stage, assuming the first resulted in a decision to consider admitting girls, should have been on "how should we do this?". Then proper working parties of grass root volunteers that would have to implement this on the ground to work out exactly how it would work. Then if and when the decision was made to allow girls then some proper support material should have been produced and sent to all Leaders at the same time as the official announcement so that all Leaders and some answers to likely question both they, their members, their members parents and other supporters and the public might be asking them.

IMHO BSA will lose alot more members and volunteers over how they have handled this than over the actual decision to admit girls itself if they had done it right and bought their volunteers along with them by including them in the decision making process.

Some questions:

 

What percentage of your scout leaders were scouts? Reading posts here, my impression you have a higher percentage than we.

 

Do you have "Family Camping" in your program?

 

Modest Proposal: Maybe we should relocate BSA HQ to Britain for this transition.

Our Group is I think somewhat unusual in that just about all of our Leaders were Scouts or Guides (Girl Scouts as you would call them). We have very few parents as Leaders, I think I can think of 1 out of about 14 Leaders. Our SL was a Guide and was a parent of a Scout when she became a Leader but her son is 23 now and is an Assistant Scout Leader elsewhere (he was an ASL in our Troop until he moved 18 months ago).

Many of our Leaders were Scouts in our Scout Group (including myself) and of those that weren't most were Scouts elsewhere and moved into the area. This includes female Leaders given some Scout Troops here have had girls since 1991 so the first female Scouts in the UK are now around 36 years old.

The Group that meets just up the road from us however has a lot of parents (or parents of former youth members) as Leaders so it does vary alot from Group to Group.

As to family camps, Groups can run family camps and some do so regularly however its certainly not something all Groups do and due to safeguarding there can be a fair amount of admin and paperwork involved in organising family camps as all adults who stay overnight on a camp need a criminal records check done on them in advance. Then you have to work out how to involve the adults on a family camp so that they all make a positive input and don't just sit around watching their kids doing things. I think if done right they could work well and would help you identify good potential Leaders amongst the parents 

Hi All

I am Peter, I am an Explorer Scout Leader and Assistant Group Scout Leader based in Headingley in Leeds, England, UK

Have a look at our Scout Group website  to see what we get up to the photo albums might be the most interesting part for you guys.

I have lurked on here occasionally in the past but thought I would finally join so I could post to answer some of the questions some of you have about how girls in Scouts works in the UK following the recent announcement by BSA of their plans to admit girls

Peter

So does that mean you used to use some very large tents? 8-12 person tents? It is not uncommon for our Patrols to have double digit members so to sleep in the same tent would require a large tent - and one that would be rather difficult for new scouters to set up without adult or older scout assistance.

 

Our patrols today sleep in two-scout tents so in that respect, it would not be a change for us.

In the UK Scout Patrols are usually made up of around 5 to 8 Scouts so they used to all fit in one tent.

Why do they have to wait to join? Are you restricted on the size of your group?

 

I've heard the complaint that girls dominate the youth leadership in Scouts Canada troops (but I can't find my source right now). Do you see the same thing occurring in the UK?

In the UK Beaver Colonies (ages 6 to 8) are usually have a maximum of 24 Beavers and are mostly oversubscribed. The fact is that Beaver numbers have grown from 108 000 in 2010 to 128 000 in 2017 but we can't open enough new Colonies fast enough to keep up with demand. This, unfortunately, means that most Colonies do have some kids old enough to be Beavers waiting for a space to open up.

I would not say that girls dominate youth leadership, they do make perfectly good Sixers and Patrol Leaders and maybe are slightly overrepresented in these roles but not to the extent that boys don't get a chance to lead and the good thing is both get to learn to lead people of both genders which is what they will have to do out in the real world as adults.

About the only slight negative I can think of is that we used to have Scouts sleep in one tent with the rest of their Patrol and with the PL in charge of the tent and looking after all their Patrol. Now we often have an extra tent or tents for girls which means the PL is not in the same tent as all of their Patrol.

This is really not a massive problem though and has not caused us any great issues but it does slightly reduce the role of a PL. If we really wanted to we could just have girls and boys share tents so long as they and their parents were all happy with this arrangement.

I am Leader in the UK in an Explorer Scout Unit (ages 14 to 18). Our Unit has always had both girls and boys as members but our Scout Group's Scout Troop went mixed sex as well back in 2005. I can say that the way the Scout Troop does things has not changed due to having girls in the proceeding 12 years apart from we usually have separate tents for girls and boys to sleep in on camps and separate dormitories for each on indoor residential, oh and we put a bin in the toilet tents now. The UK Scout Association released some guidance/FAQs in around 2006 when they announced that all Sections would be going mixed sex which can be found at http://members.scouts.org.uk/documents/AdultSupport/devfuninsfin/omwt.pdf. The difference is that we went down the route of mixed sex Sections rather than separate boys and girls sections as it seems BSA are going for currently.

We have run camps with girls on it but no female Leaders on occasion and it has never caused an issue and in fact the last time this happened I paid it so little thought I never even noticed we were doing so until someone pointed it out after the event. In the unlikely event that a female Scout has their period and can't sort it out themselves then, as a modern man, I am perfectly happy to deal with that as its just another natural bodily function. We have a supply of generic pads which the girls know where to find which usually means we don't need to get involved any way.

Our Explorer Unit hasn't always had both female and male Leaders, and it doesn't cause an issue and no Explorer or any of their parents has ever raised this as an issue. I am more bothered about having enough good Leaders than what gender they happen to be.

As to dealing with relationships between Scouts, we generally ask them to keep public displays of affection within Scouting to a minimum and are clear with them that it would be inappropriate for them to share sleeping accommodation on Scouting events and trust them to stick to this and have never had any real issue with relationships in the 14 years I have been an Explorer Scout Leader.

Feel free to ask any questions you like and I will endeavour to answer them