If you're cycling, would you plan to phone for ambulance if emergency?
I'm not sure what you mean. In all cases an ambulance would be phoned for if needed. That would be built into the RA at the planning stage before the trip has been approved.
How would you transport a soaking exhausted giving-up kid back to camp if they wanted/needed to finish a day early? By putting them in the minibus. If you are talking about canoes , the canoe would go on the trailer. However by the time it gets to practice and qualifying level the young person should have built up enough stamina and expierences to Del with the day.
Don't you camp near the kids too (I mean on the same island, so how does your stuff get there if you're not on a boat)?. I can't speak for others because we don't camp on islands.
Staff don't necessarily have to camp at the same place as the participants at Silver level, we do at bronze though.
ps: and all the extra training required such as rescue, or checks for canoeing/cycling/horse-riding competency, how many hours does that take? I ve never done a horse one but my colleagues in a different authority have. The young people doing them would be really familiar with horses and have their own.
The type of exped we can offer depends on the skill set of the staff. In our authority we have very keen canoeists who are qualified to teach.
Our Dof E sessions seat in September with a view of doing the practice at Easter and the qualifying session in May. If the first practice has been a disaster we may re do it in May and the qualifier in the summer holidays.
(coz no-one tends to verify you can walk safely, do they?) Yes they do, they need to demonstrate they can read a map, ( they don't need to do bearings at bronze level but I expect it at silver). , they should be able to work out timings and pacing and work out how long it will take them to cover a instance in different terrains, find escape routes, ways to get off a hill,how to load and correctly fit a ruck sack so it doesn't cause a strain or back damage, deal with an emergency, aid a walker who has hurt themselves.
I was reading a thread a few months ago on here about the walking exped and it sounded like some young people more or less turned up on the day and set off. I would be angry if that was my child. I would feel they haven't put the time in or learned anything. I get that not everyone likes the camping bit but you have to suck it for the award.
I imagine your Risk Assessment forms are much longer, too. Not necessarily. Once the RA is done for an activity it can be reused. We just revisit for the following exped, to see if it is still relevant or if anything needs adding etc.
Does the cost of the expedition cover the dry-bag hire & you use them against for the next year, or do parents buy & keep the dry bags for each kid? we have our own kit in central stores that we let the kids borrow. Obviously some kids prefer their own stuff but we can lend everything from compasss, trangias, tents boots, even socks. The only thing that they supply is food. ( even then we've helped out when we know the family is really struggling)
I assume kids supply their own bikes when cycling but then what do the safety checks include, who fixes any punctures or broken cables/spokes? no we supply the bikes and prefer that they use ours as we know the maintence history etc on them. They are expected to be able to do basic repairs which we teach them on the 'open sessions' that we run.
Ps: DD's friends are all doing gold & DD is assuredly NOT.