Graham White: My Notes: Scouting

A few years back, I decided it would be a good idea to register my little lad on the waiting list for Beaver Scouts and didn't realise at that point in time quite what a journey would be unfolding in front of us.

Needless to say, I ended up volunteering. I started on a fairly typical journey by offering to help out occasionally and getting DBS cleared. I found I was attending pretty much every week so from there it was a relatively small step to go into uniform and make my role official. Four years since I started helping out, I'm an "Assistant Beaver Section Leader" known to the children as "Merlin".

While on the topic of scout names, everyone in my section adopts the name of a creature found in British wildlife. It's customary for the children to use an adult's scouting name when referring to us. In fact, they have no idea what our real names are. I'm not sure why, that's just the way things have evolved. I wanted to use the name "Goshawk" but at the time our section already had someone named "Hawk" which seemed a bit too similar so I considered other small birds of prey such as "Sparrowhawk" (still too similar), "Hobby" (didn't seem right) and eventually settled on "Merlin". Now everyone seems to think I'm a wizard and I have to explain the name all the time. Stupid choice!

Scouting is a great organisation and charity, run at the top level by paid professionals but the majority of the things that happen are as a result of volunteers, such as myself! The volunteers often go to a lot of lengths, putting in hours of preparation and hard work to make sure all the kids in their section have fun, experience things they wouldn't otherwise do but remain safe. Hence, I thought I would recount some of the stuff I've been doing since signing up. Most of this is a total surprise to me as I was never involved in Scouting as a kid so I'm learning and going through the whole thing at the same time as my son.

Safety, DBS and Training

Our primary goal for each meeting and overall plan each term is to have fun while remaining safe. The safety aspect isn't too onerous, mainly consisting of an initial DBS check that is trivial enough and then risk assessing activities that basically involves common sense to think things through in advance. There is a reasonable amount of red tape involved in all this that the parents never really see. There's also training to be done. To be in uniform, one must have a first aid qualification and undertake a bunch of formal training modules, providing evidence to an assessor that you've qualified to pass each module. This must all be done within 3 years. Once complete, you're awarded your wood beads - I'm currently most of the way there and have 1 year left to complete the remaining few modules.

Activities

Having never been involved in Scouts previously, pretty much everything that goes on comes as something new (if not a surprise) to me. Camp fire, songs, cooking, crafting, knot tying and a raft of other outdoor and adventurous activities are all very cool things to get involved with and organise.

Visits and Visitors

I've not been scouting for particularly long, especially when compared to some of our volunteers that have been in the organisation 30+ years. However, I've already racked up quite a few different venues and experiences: