Scout groups not enough Volunteers

[girlfriend44]

Local Scout group has lots of children signed up but enough volunteers do in danger of closing.

Is this the same everywhere?
What stops people from volunteering?

I used to volunteer with Girl Guiding

Pulled out due to several factors, mainly the admin (oh god I HATED GO with a passion). This I could possibly overlook or delegate but there’s the recently arising safeguarding issues — there is no way on earth I will ever take on a position of responsibility with that organisation until they sort that out. Some poor fucker is going to have something bloody awful happen on their camp and it sure as shit isn’t going to be me. Or my daughter for that matter.

I am the only regular weekly parent helper at DS’ Beaver group and when he moves to Cubs in a few months time I won’t continue to volunteer at Cubs (except if there is a parent roster).

The Beaver Leader and the two Assistant Leaders do an amazing job and our group is known for how much effort is put into the activities and experiences, but from a volunteer standpoint a major detraction for me is how much behaviour management dominates each session.

We have up to 24 boys and girls and there is always a significant minority who are disruptive, don’t listen, and/or run riot. Of course I have no idea if these children have issues or are just poorly behaved but I’ve discovered that this type of volunteering is not for me. I will stay and help until DS leaves because getting parents to turn up for the roster is difficult and I don’t want to leave them in the lurch, even though they have asked me to stay on once my DS moves to Cubs.

I volunteer in two other places and really enjoy them so I’m afraid I’ve discovered that helping with children isn’t really my thing sadly.

There definitely is massive differences between groups and the way they are run , myself and my assistant leader signed our cub pack up for all the district events which the other cub pack in our group never did and when you went to these events you often came across other leaders who had started at our group and then moved on because of the exec team and other leaders .

There are huge amounts of organisations and charities that people volunteer with. I’ve volunteered with something or other on a weekly basis (at least) for most of my adult life and I’m late 40s. Never volunteered with scouts though, and if my Dc ever wanted to do scouts, I wouldn’t volunteer. But I more than pull my weight elsewhere.

The groups which have leaders who stay doing it for 30 years are more odd and have more issues with leaders. They can be weird.

What an odd generalisation
Not my experience across all the Groups I work with.

@SweetSakura Lots of adults who live as part of families where both parents go out to work, also volunteer. I mean, I don't know everything about the lives of every Leader in our District, but, off the top of my head I'd say this applies to the majority of Leaders. There are many couples where both of them volunteer as well.
I mean this doesn't just apply to Scouts - it applies in different things I have been involved in or that my dc have attended too.

Back to the OP - yes, we have a real volunteer shortage, and SO many enquiries for spaces we don't have - most of which are from folk who feel unable to offer any support to the Groups, even in a non-child-facing volunteer role.

I volunteered at mine for a while but found it really weird. No one told me what to do, or how to manage the appalling behaviour of the boys (all the local ‘problem families’ dumped their boys there as cheap childcare 😐) all the children had to call us fake names and had to do weird rituals like ‘swimming up’ - I felt like I was grooming them into a cult 👀

DS lost interest fortunately so that was end of that.

My dh volunteered to help at scouts. The leader left 6 months later and he was left running the whole thing! He is not your organised type, great at suggesting activities and interacting with the kids but no good at all the paperwork. There was no support, he became more and more miserable and eventually resigned. It was awful.

Remember Cubs are between the ages of 8 and 10. When I did out of school care with a qualification I could only ratio 1:10 children. Often we are doing things like cooking on open flames, hikes, camps, scavenger hunts, rope and knot work.. even just having 36 Cubs playing what would seem like a simple game in the hall can turn nasty very quickly if there aren’t enough eyes and hands around

I quit volunteering for the PTA after I realised it was a task which people expect someone to do but had absolutely no appreciation for that person. Some people would openly criticize decisions made on Facebook just to be mean. They would suggest things the PTA could do without realising the work involved and with zero intention of giving up any of their time to help. In the end I was done.

I am a Cub leader. Just to cover a few things...

I often take my "wrong age" child with me. Not so much now they are older, but younger DD did a whole extra 18 months in Beavers as she started at 4. (Then Covid hit, so the last time she actually went she was still 6 then returned a Cub). This only works if the ages are slightly out.

You definitely don't need to have kids. DH has been a leader since he was 18! Above DD actually did her first Scout camp at 3 months old (day time only) as I helped with cooking.

Ratios... there are different ratios home and away. Its 1:12 +1 for Cubs away from your meeting place for example. We do have 3 leaders for 24 Cubs at home, but it means one of us can be ill without calling in reinforcements.

In our Group we currently have 5 leaders plus GSL. We make up our numbers for camps with other Scout DBSed adults from the Committee. We have 20 Scouts, 24 Cubs, 24 Beavers. So for a camp, that's 3 leaders for Beavers, 2 for Cubs, 1 for the Scouts and 1 in charge so technically we are in ratio. But its very tight and exhausting! We are not even looking at opening a Squirrrels section anytime soon.

Personally I am now counting the weeks until younger DD turns 10 and can go to Scouts. I hate being her leader. She's very silly towards me that she isn't to the other leaders. I fully understand why parents don't want to volunteer with their own children

Squirrels... thats another bone of contention. When so many groups are struggling, why open a section requiring 3 additional adults?

Overall... I love it. I hope our group continues to flourish when our two mid 70s leaders decide to retire.

I wouldn’t volunteer for Girlguiding because it is no longer an organisation I trust to safeguard girls.

Me too. It just got ridiculous and very unpleasant at times. Which is a shame because I genuinely loved doing it.

Sadly volunteers aren't respected enough these days. Without volunteers, there wouldn't be Guide and Scout groups and the associated acitivities; there wouldn't be a school fair or a christmas party or disco or anything else which is organised by the PTA; there wouldn't be any baby and toddler playgroups; your local preschool would close without a committee of volunteers; the local football/cricket/rugby coach is probably a volunteer too. Plenty of people are willing to use these services which rely on volunteers but couldn't possibly volunteer 2 hours a month to be part of it, and I'm sure would complain bitterly if those services were to close.

(Yes I am a brownie leader, vice chair of the PTA and chair of the preschool committee, I don't work full time but plenty of my volunteer colleagues do, it does not have to be hours a week).

I ran a group when mine were younger. As was I.

It was a real pain.

I was a single parent who worked full time and money wouldn't pay you for the hassle.

even just having 36 Cubs playing what would seem like a simple game

Our group won't go up to 36 capacity as a rule. Groups this size don't work for scouting. You end up with crowd control issues which take away from the activities and the result is no one enjoys it as much as they could. Remembering if you do off site it makes it particularly difficult to run and you are often doing activities with fire.

Squirrels are pointless. We have no intention of starting them. They are a nice idea for TV but in practice the kids are two young to do anything and it's too helper intensive. Beavers is difficult enough and often is more about the management of kids in terms of time compared to the actual activity because they don't have the physical skills to do stuff and are still developing ability to focus (sit still for more than 2 mins). This has been particularly bad the last couple of years due to the pandemic making kids fall behind with this.

Our leaders kids get special treatment and are allowed to attend unofficially if parents are helping just to enable leaders. They are officially allowed to start a section slightly early if everyone is in agreement.

At one point we were put under pressure by district to open up spaces to 36.we told them to sod off. Its worked out as we opened up the extra sections because we were able to get more adults involved and enjoying it with 24 which we don't think would happen with 36.

It has always been the case here, though we do have the most amazing married couple who hold it all together, running more than one group each per week. They deserve an award.

I volunteered as a parent, weekly, every camp and weekend coffee mornings. I met my closest friends there doing the same.

The same group of friends were also the PTA at our local primary and one was a school governor.

Volunteering worked for me as someone new to the area. I was quite shy but felt that volunteering, with an active focus, meant easy conversation about what we were doing.

Most of us were teaching full time, one running her own business, but felt that we should use our skills to support our children and others.

There are always those that do…..

I can think of nothing worse than trying to fit 36 Cubs in our Scout hut. Even with 24 its cramped! A school hall where you could split them into smaller groups maybe...

36 is crazy! I would say 18-22 is optimum, 25 at a push

I volunteered at a toddler group for about 6 years while I was a SAHM/working pt. It was probably 4-5 hours per week, including preparation time at home. I stopped once I started working ft.

Evening activities would be harder due to childcare and Scout leading is a huge commitment. There is also the danger that once you volunteer you feel obliged to carry on longer than anticipated if you know no one else will take over the role.

My kids are too old for scouts now but when they were at Cubs state there was a compulsory rota - each parent had to help out around once a term as they could not get adult numbers. Daughter volunteers at Rainbows but as she is 17 she does not count as an adult and the Rainbows was cancelled for months after the leader went on maternity leave.

It's the same with all children's activities, PTAs and so on. When I was on the PTA we would put out emails saying we understood people couldn't always attend meetings but that we needed help with writing a newsletter or emailing local businesses for raffle prizes or shopping around for whatever products we needed for an event - loads and loads of jobs which could be done from the sofa with a laptop.

Still no volunteers. There is a large percentage of people who say they're too busy but they really just don't want to, and think someone else will do it.

This is interesting. All my kids are scouts but we live abroad and it's totally different. No parents are asked to volunteer as it is all run by older scouts. DS18 now helps run the equivalent of brownies for instance. It sems a lot less bureaucratic too.

@Swissnotswiss my DS is a young leader at the moment but hopefully will be going away to university next year so won’t be able to help out then. Which is the same pattern for most of our young leaders. Don’t your 18yo move on?

@toomuchlaundry He's still in his last year at school but lots of the other leaders are at university. Here a lot of students stay at home for university but even if they don't they can join a new group. In fact last week his pack had an open day to recruit students who have moved to the area.

He "helps" to run it but there must be an adult volunteers somewhere doing something - organising the programme of activities, doing risk assessments and consent forms, managing the money. Not many 18 year olds could run a group alone.