Any Scout Experts...

[mpsssm]

Hello, My daughter has just turned 13 and has been in Scouting since she was 6, achieving both her Bronze and Silver Chief Scout Awards.

During this time she attended every camp, the vast majority of in person meetings and did all the homework activities. She has been on many hikes.

However during the Autumn term we had family visit from abroad. They were travelling around the UK visiting family and we only had one weekend with them. This coincided with a one day walking competition, which my daughter therefore did not attend.

She has found out tonight that this means she cannot do the expedition needed for her gold award and is really disappointed (she has SEN). She won't get another chance as she will transfer to Explorers before there is another opportunity.

Does anyone know if there is anyway round this? I appreciate it must be hard to plan all these things but we didn't know the event in the Autumn was essential for the award... Not that I am sure it would have made a difference as she would still have wanted to see her family.

I still think Scouting is amazing and that the leaders are amazing for giving up so much time which is why I don't really want to approach them about this. I feel cheeky when they are all volunteers.

She has until the end of her first term in Explorers to finish everything. And she can stay in scouts until 14.5 years.

If it is really the only thing left to do and she has the other 8 badges I'm sure the Scout leaders and Explorer leaders will help.

With Covid, the chief scouts awards have been very hard to get.

Is she doing or can she do the Duke of Edinburgh through school? That would count.
alternatively ask her scout leader for the criteria snd see if she can make up what she missed out of scouts.

Is there another local group doing a similar activity to the one she missed that she can join in with? Might be worth asking at district or area level to see if there's a way around it.

When you say she can't do the expedition do you mean she missed the opportunity to do it or she's not being allowed to join the expedition because she missed a prep day?

If it's the first then I would try other groups in the area to see if they are running an expedition she can join - she has another 18 months to complete this as she doesn't technically have to move up to explorers until she is 14 1/2.

If it's the latter then I would be speaking to the leaders to ask what work she needs to do at home to bring her up to speed so that she can join the expedition.

The expedition challenge is one of the hardest badges to organise and deliver - we are in a similar position at my troop with 8 kids moving up that need to do this badge for their Gold. Covid has meant that we've had to shoehorn extra opportunities into the scouting diary to give the scouts the opportunity to gain the badgework they need.

Many thanks for your replies.
I change some details regarding my child due to some safeguarding issues so ages etc may not add up, but yes she is doing D of E... So might this count?

Our Scout group is very proactive and the leaders really do give a lot of themselves so I don't want to make more work for them. If she can carry this on to explorers, this might be the answer.

It was a one day hike she missed, which seemed no different to any of the others she'd done. We did not know it was prep work for the expedition... However even if we had, it wouldn't have changed the outcome due to needing and wanting to see the family. Just unlucky timing.