Restart of Face to Face Scouting
We’ve now had quite a number of risk assessments for face to face scouting approved. It’s really good to see that meetings are happening again in so many places. The District restart team is available to provide support and answer any questions you have and can be contacted at rafacetoface@rushcliffescouts.org.uk.
The risk assessment process is just the start. It defines how your meetings will run and how the venues will be used. We need to do what we can to ensure the safety of our young people and our leaders as we return to face to face meetings. We have made a promise to parents and carers that we will run out meetings in a way which follows the Scout Association guidelines that informed our risk assessment process, and they may already be anxious about the return. We know that the new “rule of 6” doesn’t apply to Scout meetings but many members of the public won’t. We are very often meeting in public places at the moment and you may have seen in the news that there have been calls for the public to report those who are ignoring the new rules. This additional attention on what we are doing would be much harder to deal with if it can be shown that we are flouting other rules. For all of these reasons it is vital that we follow the measures that we put on those risk assessments at every meeting that we have
There are lots of things that we can do make things run smoothly including
- If your risk assessment has been approved it is not finished with. It is the document that will need to be followed at your meetings. Make sure that all of the leaders, parent helpers etc have read it. Have a discussion with the other leaders in your section about how the meetings will run so that everyone knows what is expected.
- Make sure the Parents and carers know what is expected of them. This could be information about drop off and pick up, availability of toilets or drinks. Depending on the mix of venues used this may change from one week to the next. Everyone has written something on this in their risk assessment but are you sure this information has gone out when it needs to?
- If the meeting venue has its own rules and procedures make sure that everyone running the session is aware of them as well as the young people if appropriate. Think as a group about how you will manage these for your meetings. An example of this could be at Hollygate which has a requirement that only one person per group uses the toilet at a time. How will you keep track of that, particularly if you have split in to smaller groups?
- The guidelines place more emphasis on social distancing between adults than young people. Social distancing between adults is something that we do need to follow and we should be reminding each other of this. In doing so we will be following the guidelines and setting an example to the young people. The challenge of managing the young people will depend on their ages. For the older age groups you can have that discussion and set expectations, though I’m sure reminders will be needed from time to time. The younger sections will need much more reminding and will benefit from being engaged in activities which naturally keep them spread out where you can. It’s worth thinking about how we can adapt things to include that distancing. For example, asking Beavers to line up in lodges will have fairly predictable results. Is there another way that we can get them to arrange themselves that naturally includes that distance?
- Plan ahead. If you have 20 cubs, don’t just hope that only 15 turn up. You need to make sure that you have the right number and no more so think about how you will manage this. The current limit of 15 is an absolute limit. If you end up with too many you will have to send some home.
- Complying with the current guidelines will require more direct supervision than has probably been the case before. This is particularly true at those times between activities where leaders attention may be on other things.
- As part of our normal safety training we know that we all have a responsibility for safety when running a session. The measures in place for COVID are no exception. We have all returned to an environment that is very familiar and are likely to relax and forget from time to time. We all have a responsibility to provide that gentle and helpful reminder when we see that happen. This is true for adults and young people. Should your polite reminder be ignored then we would encourage you to let us know.
- Wardens on our campsites have been asked to have a quiet word if they notice that either Scout Association guidelines or campsite safety measures are being ignored. Please accept any helpful and constructive advice in the spirit in which it is given.
- Accept that not everything will work as we expected. We have always had to be prepared to change plans during a meeting to cope with unexpected situations, and this might be more likely as we also have to comply with the covid measures. It’s useful to have a chat after each session to look at what went well and what went less well. Be prepared to go back and look at the risk assessment again if necessary. If it needs to be changed in the light of your experience then we can do that. We cannot just ignore it.
These new requirements are new for everyone and there is a lot for us all to learn. There will be things that don’t work out as well as we had hoped. If you have experience of things that haven’t worked as well as you thought they would or come across problems that you hadn’t expected then please let us know. That information could be really valuable to others who are about to try the same thing. We don’t have to mention your name!
No-one is expecting perfection, but we do need to comply with the Scout Association guidelines and the risk assessments that we wrote. If you need any help, or want to discuss any problems that you are having then please ask.
