Keeping our young people safe – New Forest Scouts

Information for parents

Seeing a young person grow in confidence is why our volunteers help out at Scouts. But for our young people to thrive, they need to feel safe.

As part of the Scouts, we take the safety and safeguarding of every young person in the Scouts, from age 4 to 25, very serious.

Our volunteers

All our volunteers are DBS checked, and those working alongside our young people must provide references.
Experienced volunteers from our district have a welcome to Scouting chat with any new volunteer to make sure they are suitable for the role they are applying for.
All volunteers and parent helpers have a clear code of conduct we expect them to follow. It’s known as the Yellow Card, all volunteers are expected to have a copy of it with them and most Scout halls will have a poster of it too. It’s updated regularly as we learn from past occurrences and from those in other youth movements.
Training in Safety, Safeguarding and First Aid is essential for all volunteers who work with young people or support our leaders. This is updated at least every three years and there is additional special training for running safe activities, residential events and adventurous activities.

Informing our parents and carers

Parents and carers should know in advance what their young people are doing at any Scout activity and be able to question it or raise concerns.
You will always be notified in writing about outings or residential trips that get your express permission and include details about who to contact during the event. This may be through a paper form and slip, a letter or email or through a communication on OSM if your local Scouts use it.
The rules our leaders follow, including the Yellow Card, and the Scout policies are freely accessible on scouts.org.uk.
If any guardians have any concerns we actively encourage them to raise it with our leaders, our volunteer managers or with the Scouts directly through the Scout Information Centre.

Preparing our young people

All our Scout meetings locally are encouraged to establish and review a code of conduct with their young people regularly so they know what is and isn’t OK when at Scout activities.
Safety topics are built into the Scout programme, be that Squirrels learning about local superheroes who help us, Beavers learning about road and rail crossings, Cubs learning about personal safety or all sections learning about emergency aid.
Knowing what equipment and rules our Scouts of all ages need when doing adventurous activity is built into any activity. This means even the youngest Beaver doing a hike away knows about the equipment they need to do so safely. This is built upon throughout the 4-25 year programme.
We work with others like the NSPCC to coordinate our rules and posters from them may even appear in our Scout halls. This website also uses the Click CEOP button which our young people may learn about at Scouts or school.