Memorandum submitted by The Scout Association
1. BACKGROUND
INFORMATION ON
THE SCOUT
ASSOCIATION
The Scout Association (hereafter TSA) is an
international volunteer led co-educational youth Movement founded
in 1907. It seeks to support development of young people in achieving
their full physical, intellectual, social and spiritual potential,
as individuals, as responsible citizens and as members of their
local, national and international communities. To achieve this,
Scout Groups across the country offer activities each week to
400,000 young people aged 6-25 years old made possible by the
efforts of 100,000 voluntary adult leaders. Young women make up
over 15% of our Movement and Scouting has groups in every area
of the country; from Woking and Worthing to Birmingham and Brick
Lane. The diversity of Scouting broadly reflects contemporary
Britain, with 4.5% of our membership coming from a black and ethnic
minority background. Indeed, some of our fastest growing Groups
in numbers are those which contain young people from these communities.
It is a growing Movement, with over 15,000 young
people joining in the last year alone. At present there are over
32,000 young people on waiting lists to join Scouting across the
UK and the number of volunteers working for Scouting is bigger
than the combined workforces of the BBC (24,000) and McDonalds
(67,000) put together.
2. WORKING WITH
YOUNG PEOPLE
AT RISK
OF OFFENDING
OR ANTI-SOCIAL
BEHAVIOUR
The young people involved in Scouting come from
a wide variety of backgrounds, including some whose behaviour
has brought them to the attention of public agencies. TSA research
and experience illustrates that for all young people who participate
in Scouting it can be a vital mechanism for intervening to ensure
that they succeed in becoming responsible citizens. Specifically,
TSA research shows that young people who have participated in
a youth or sport club are less likely to drink or smoke, more
likely to exercise, more likely to have a good relationship with
other adults in their community, more likely to have parents who
trust them and more likely to be involved in their schooling.[47]
In partnership with police, social services and youth offending
teams the Scouts have developed a number of projects working with
young people who are at risk of offending or of antisocial behaviour.
Below is a short summary of some of these projects.
Essex and Northumberland: Supporting Action to
Prevent Truancy
In Essex The Scout Association has worked with
young people who have been referred to them by schools, social
services and police as young people who are at risk of dropping
out of education or are not in education or training at all. The
Scout Association then take groups of these young people away
to do challenging activities. This experience also enables Scout
volunteers to develop the skills required to support young people
with behavioural difficulties to participate in activities with
their peers. In Northumberland The Scout Association takes young
people who are at risk of poor educational attainment who have
been referred by their schools to take part in Scouting for a
day a week. The partnerships with police, social services and
youth workers which have helped design these projects have enabled
The Scout Association to develop skills and expertise in delivering
Scouting for a wide range of young people, and in turn assisted
other partner agencies to understand how Scouting can add value
to their work.
London Wide Activities: Project YOU and Youth
Offending
The Scout Association is a partner in Project
YOU which is a London wide project helping young people in London
to become involved in a number of uniformed organisations. Project
YOU brings together a number of uniformed organisations in the
capital including the St John Ambulance, Girlguiding UK, the Boy's
Brigade, The Sea Cadets, The Combined Cadets Force, The Army Cadets
and Metropolitan Police who collaborate in identifying young people
who would benefit from participation in the structured youth activities
these organisations offer. To date, Project YOU has been trialled
successfully in Croydon as a format for recruiting more young
people, and vitally, adult volunteers into uniformed organisations.
It has also helped to build good working relationships in local
boroughs between voluntary and statutory sector partners and is
the subject of interest of the Mayor of London as a model for
how young people can be assisted to develop character and resilience
as a means of preventing their involvement in anti-social behaviour.
The Metropolitan Police now propose to roll Project YOU out across
London as part of their youth engagement strategy and is at present
consulting on the early stages of the development of structures
and resources that can support this work.
The Scout Association are also in the process
of exploring development projects that involve young offenders
in positive activities in South London.
Working within an education context to support
the provision of after school activities
Scout Groups are active in a number of educational
settings with young people of all ages. Of particular interest
to the Committee in this field of activity, may be the work the
Scouts are doing within the Oasis Academy in Enfield. This has
helped the Academy to establish its own registered Scout group,
identifying a number of volunteers from the staff and recruiting
young people to take part in the activities provided. This forms
part of the Academy's wider 3E's (Enrich, Embed and Extend) Programme,
which runs every Wednesday during curriculum time and aims to
inspire and unlock the talent of those students who may excel
in areas outside of those covered directly by the National Curriculum.
Approximately 40% of the activities undertaken by the Oasis Academy
Scout Group are linked with the other activities on offer during
the 3E's afternoon and nearly all of these can be accredited with
Scout Activity Badges. In November 2008, the Academy's 3E's programme
was awarded the RM School of Talent Award by the Specialist Schools
and Academies Trust.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
ACTION
1. Developing partnerships for provision
of positive activities for young people
In helping Britain's young people to make positive
choices about their behaviour and futures, The Scout Association
believes voluntary youth-led organisations can offer a vital resource
to society. However, at present engagement with the voluntary
sector by the statutory sector is too often driven by interest
in commissioning services or seeking funding for service provision.
This means those organisations who are not dependent on or receiving
statutory funding can be inadvertently excluded from service planning
or delivery—to the detriment of all concerned.
The Scout Association would recommend that in
looking at delivering services that can support young people to
build character and resilience, Government seeks to find new ways
to ensure those organisations that do not seek financial relationships
with the statutory sector are also included in sharing best practice
and strategic planning activities at both a local and national
level.
2. Recognising the role Voluntary Groups
can play—and what they cannot do
When looking at supporting young people who
are at risk of anti-social behaviour, The Scout Association believe
the Committee can play a vital role in encouraging a better understanding
of activities of volunteer led organisations. The Scout Association
does not aspire to replace those specialist services which work
with young people who have offended or are at risk of offending,
but to help every young person who wishes to join to make a positive
contribution to society. Therefore, throughout all activities
and structures The Scout Association seek this objective rather
than to target only one section of society.
As the examples set out in this memorandum reflect,
The Scout Association has worked with a number of other voluntary
youth organisations and specialist statutory agencies to deliver
bespoke opportunities that can support the involvement of young
people who are at risk of offending or have behavioural problems
in Scouting. However, The Scout Association is also clear that
it could not design and deliver such projects without the support
and direct participation of other specialist agencies in this
work including probation service workers, teachers, social workers
and police officers. When considering the role that volunteer
led organisations can play in helping young people it is vital
for any policy recommendations to take account of both their strengths
and limitations in defining where they, can contribute to being
a solution for the causes of knife crime.
3. Enabling volunteer led organisations to
expand their activities
A key concern for The Scout Association regarding
the present debates about the role any volunteer led organisation
can play in addressing knife crime is the possibility they could
raise expectations about the capacity of these organisations to
expand which are unsustainable. Indeed, any measures designed
to increase the number of applications to join organisations such
as the Scouts which are not matched by corresponding support for
the infrastructure required to deliver the additional volunteers
this would require are likely to be counterproductive. In common
with other large co-educational youth movements, a key challenge
for The Scout Association is the recruitment and retention of
adult volunteers who in turn can support the provision of activities
for young people. The Scout Association would strongly urge both
local and national Government to support volunteering with young
people as a positive and rewarding experience that can offer new
skills and experiences for people of all ages.
Specifically, if the Committee are agreed of
the role that organisations such as the Scouts can play in helping
prevent anti-social behaviour, The Scout Association believes
there are a number of areas in which action would be beneficial.
These include raising awareness of the benefits of Scouting to
adult volunteers and the accredited training they receive to undertake
this role which can be transferred to the workplace, support for
volunteers to participate—for example through encouraging
employers to give time off for such activities—or funding
for the infrastructure of Scouting that can help in turn to support
individuals to become volunteers. The Scout Association has a
regional volunteer structure to support recruitment of volunteers
and their participation in Scouting. Funding for staff capacity
to support these activities could help towards expansion of the
numbers of young people who could be accommodated in Scouting
across the country. It could also assist the work of the Scouts
in creating partnerships that can support young people with behavioural
difficulties to participate. Please note The Scout Association
estimate it takes six to twelve months to develop and train a
volunteer leader so any substantial increase in volunteers would
only impact on the capacity to deliver services for young people
after this time period.
47 NfP synergy survey Typical Young People The Scount
Association January 2007. Back
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