Cambridgeskip

Sounds like BSA needs a knot book http://www.scouts.org.uk/cms.php?pageid=134

but someone from the UK, gave me the impression that the majority of all units was in the leadership of young adult. You were looked at as kindof strange if you were an still trying to be an adult leader and were older the 25 or 30 (or somewhere around there).. Moosetracker - possibly it was something I said. In another thread I referred to some other European countries where you had to retire from being a leader at around 30 and could only be a commissioner of some sort above that age. In the Uk we have quite a spectrum of ages. Currently we have 8 adult leaders with my troop (a lot! bu

Now then, seeing as the UK model was mentioned I guess I should put in my forpeneth (2 cents) worth. The current age ranges in the UK have been a success but that is not to say that they don't have their draw backs so be careful of what you wish for. But I guess I should give a bit of background to how it ended up that way. Historically the age ranges in the UK have changed a number of times. From around 1965 onwards they were Cubs 8-10 and a half Scouts 10 and a half to 15 and a half Venture Scouts 15 and a half to 21 From the late 80s onwards Beavers were introduced f

To be honest I wouldn't believe everything you read in the Telegraph. It is so biased* and right wing it makes Gengis Khan look like a liberal. They are having a review of the position and not promising to change anything. *All UK news papers are heavily biased one way or the other

"You are correct in that, and if memory serves, that's the policy in the UK. Once you get age out over there, you look for another group to join." Kind of...... You need to remember the age ranges here which are Beavers 6-8 Cubs 8 - 10 and a half Scouts 10 and a half - 14 Explorers 14-18 Network 18-25 At 18 you as well as being in Network you can also be an adult leader with any section. Certainly we have had 18/19/20 year old leaders with beavers, cubs and scouts round our way and indeed for a while we had a 19 year old girl as CSL with our cubs (she dispensed with t

In all this talk of checking references does the USA have the equivalent of a CRB check? Over here we not only can we are also obliged to do a CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) check not just at scouts but on any adult that works with "vulnerable" people (essentially children, the elderly, those with learning difficulties or the disabled) They have to prove their identity and they are then checked to see if they have a criminal record. Of course this will only catch out anyone that has been prosecuted but it obviously acts as a deterant to any undesirables from even applying.

I find it extraordinary that any willing adult volunteer would be turned away without very good reason. So what if he is a student? We currently have two student assistant leaders with our scouts and two with our cubs plus a 3rd who only graduated and stayed in the area a few months back. In fact scouting in Cambridge would fall over if it were not for the students who volunteer across the city. In addition the uni scout and guide club run a number of events at district and county level which are fantastic. Do US uni's have similar organisations? They are a huge success over here. The Cambridg

Similar to Pchadbo, we find some free time works quite well. On a typical week long camp where the kids cook on fire a typical daily time table would be wake up at 7am, aim to be cooked, eaten and cleaned up for 9am flag break/order of the day with a free time period then till either 9.30 or 10am before programme proper. There would then be another period of free time at the end of the day's formal programme at 4.30 before they start lighting fires for dinner around 5.30. It works quite well. Typically it will result in a game of football (soccer! nothing involving touch downs thank you

As well as weight being an issue it's also worth thinking about the rucksack itself. Men and women are different shapes and it is important that the boys have a man's rucksack and girls a woman's so that the weight distribution between shoulders and hips is correct. You can have the lightest rucksack in your patrol but if all the weight goes on your shoulders is going to get uncomfortable!

I think Sasha has it right here, much of this is about expectations. Being in the UK I have a coed troop. I've seen boys that when faced with a girl who has matured quicker than they have (and that is a biological fact of life) have stepped up to the mark because we have expected them to, I've also seen them decide that there is no way they can compete so don't, normally when as adults we took our eye off the ball. Itreally is about expectations. On that food issue cooking does have to be spread around all scouts of all ages. The fact is that where ever you are in the world being able to

Here here Moosetracker. Morals are shades of grey and what I believe is acceptable you may not. So be it. But facts are facts. And the facts are that homosexuals are no greater threat to a child than heterosexuas and to try and equate homosexuality with peadophilia smacks of ignorance and prejudice. It saddens me that any of my fellow scouts still hold such views. and

Baden P - I think you have misunderstood Eamon's post. I read it as meaning that those in prison for peadophilia were sick and that the gay men (who presumably are in for something else) were the caring ones, albeit caring men who have somewhat gone off the rails.

Moosetracker 1. As far as I know we have never had chartering organisations. Someone with a better knowledge of UK scouting may be able to tell you different but as far as I know, with the exception of a very small number of closed groups (normally attached to boarding schools) no one has anequivalent of a charter. This may be a cultural issue. Where groups meet varies. My group is lucky in that we have our own HQ built on land that we lease from our County Council. Others use school halls or, most commonly, church halls. What happens though is that churchs are generally happy to re

Bit of blue sky thinking.... Could BSA change evenmore fundamentally and just drop the need for a chartering organisation? Works perfectly well elsewhere and then BSA can have its own policies without having to worry about the chartering bodies. Just a thought!

A couple of questions from the UK..... How does this whole thing work with international events? If I brought my troop to an international jamboree of some sort in the USA and my openly gay assistant leader came to what's the deal? Would she be allowed to attend? She's a fully signed up member in good standing of a WOSM affiliated association. What would happen if no one realised she was gay (there is no reason why they should) till she got there? Similarly where leaders in the USA say they would have nothing to do with BSA if it admited homosexuals would you/they attend an internati

Now then, examples of neckers on youth.... While I have hundreds of photos of my own merry band we also have a local agreement with parents that they are generally only posted on the internet on our groups picassa account as private albums and only parents, leaders and selected known (in the real world) individuals are invited to view, I am sure you understand. However.... a few links I can point you towards First we live blogged a trip to Amsterdam about a year ago, you can find the blog here http://12thcambridge.wordpress.com/ Apologies for the dodgy formatting in pl

Interestingly in the late 90s there was a proposal to do away with the necker from the uniform in the UK. There was near insurrection! Not from the adults but from the scouts themselves. The kids love the necker, it is in some ways very tribal. It is a very basic human need, particularly for teenagers, to want to belong and the necker is fantastic in that its basic outline identifies you as something huge, like scouting generally, but the group colours identify you as part of a smaller family group. It's perfect!

Perhaps there could have been a better dismisall, maybe there couldn't. Who knows, difficult for those of us not there to say. But for this SM to blame his scouts misbehaving on that is dreadful. It should have been those scouts he was hauling over the coals (do you understand that expression your side of the pond?) and not the camp organisers. I had a small group misbehave at a large and frankly tediously dull camp fire last year. Could it have been run better? Yes. Did I pass the buk? No. All 3 were invited to apologise to the camp fire leader, all 3 were restricted to our site for the

At the moment I have 13 year old with Aspergers syndrome. If you are not familiar it is a particular type of Autism (in fact Autism is a bit like the term Cancer, it is a catch all term for a range of similar but related conditions). The lad is work in progress but he has gone from being very difficult indeed to now just a bit of hard work. So a few tips. 1. You can't do this on your own, neither can his parents, neither can his school. All the adults, and indeed his friends, have to work together. So get talking! 2. You need to see his diagnosis which his parents should have. This

Mr Boyce - I am quite shocked that anyone would seek to make any link between homosexuality and peadophiles. To do is a load of ignorant, prejudiced, nonsense.

In February I had a wonderful moment when I present a scout with his Chief Scout's Gold award (it's the highest award in the 10-14 scout section in the UK). It wasn't the first that I had given out but what was unique was that he completely didn't realise he had completed it! He's one of these lads that signs up for everything, if it's happening, he's there. Not because it will tick off part of this badge or that badge but because he just loves being a scout and what we do. When I gathered them in a horse shoe and said that I had a CSG to give out I even saw him looking around trying to g

As others have said the last thing you want to do is get mad, that's exactly what the jokers want. I do use the arm in the air routine to get silence and if indivduals are not quiet (especially if a PL has already told them) they get invited to leave the room and sit out of what ever was meant to happen next. In more extreme situations I have called parents to get them to collect their child (Only done it 3 times in 15 years!). Once a parent has suffered the embarassment of having to come down to our HQ to collect their child because of their behaviour it's pretty rare for it to ever happ

Garrison Cap - It seems I think that I had misunderstood you! However my experience of co-ed scouting is that to be honest I think adults are far more stressed about sexual relationships than they need to be. Yes kids are curious, that goes with puberty, but to be honest for the most part they talk about sex an awful lot more than they actually do it. We have rules on camp such as single sex tents, no going into each others tents after dark etc, we trust the scouts to follow those rules and they follow them! We have one couple in the troop (it's actually quite cute!) and they have simply

Tampa Turtle - agreed, if there is an underage physical relationship happening then at the very least seeking to discourage it is entirely appropriate. However the implication from Garrison Cap (and do forgive me if I have misunderstood) is that the very fact that a scout in the troop is gay means that you have to be more proactive. I just don't see that that is the case.

Garrison Cap - I am genuinelly interested as to why you think you would need to do that? ie actively stop him from trying to have sex with other scouts. Or put another way, if you were involved in a co-ed youth group of some sort would you feel you had to actively stop heterosexual kids from having sex?