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?

Unfortunately in today's selfish times everyone thinks that other people will do the all the volunteering, and then complain when things don't run any more.

He could volunteer to be a young leader at a group local to his university? Unless he is studying medicine or something, most students have plenty of free time

A few years ago, before Covid I contacted the Guides to volunteer. I contacted them 4x over 2 months in two forms and no one ever got back to me.(Perhaps because of a lack of volunteers?) but that certainly wouldn't help them.

Yes there are. But the oldest are 24, 25 and are all scouts. No parents involved. There is also less risk assessment which may or may not be a good thing!

Also he's not the leader, just one of several. This summer he organized a week long trek, booked accommodation etc for his own group though. It's been a great learning experience.

@Swissnotswiss so do they just leave at 24/25? Its great the young ones are involved, but they learn a lot from the lifelong leaders (our main Scout and Cub leaders remember a lot of our parents from their Scout days!)

@PuttingDownRoots Scouts is technically 10.5 so you might have longer with her than you think

Uk scouting had a problem for a long time because of the ages for the units. It meant that kids got bored at a certain age and dropped out of scouting never to return. There is a gap between about age 50 and age 30 (ish). This also is when they had a bunch of scandals come to light.

More recently they've changed the air banding which makes more sense and they are getting better long term retention within younger groups who then are more likely to go on to be young leaders and leaders in their own right.

There are also issues with economics and scout groups and how they need to raise money to continue and to run day to day. Some groups in district have struggled with doing things like buying food up front for camp (and then getting the money back a while later through expenses after the fact) so have relied in help from us to help them run camps. It's quite common for the group to owe DH a couple of hundred quid on a regular basis.

We had found before the pandemic that groups in left well off areas were able to get volunteers more easily and the groups in well off areas struggled. It was affordable for less well off kids and the better off parents just thought they could throw money at groups.

Now even though it's one of the cheapest out of school activities, the less well off areas just aren't able to find people who can afford to help and the penny has dropped in better off areas with the closure of loads of stuff over covid and them being more conscious of cost.

Also many groups just didn't run during covid and a lot of the older leaders saw their opportunity to jack it in.

@CakeCrumbs44 he has thought about that

Mainly yes, although there are a few outliers.

My head is blissfully buried in the sand and fortunately its been pretty much agreed she can go at minimum age for several reasons. 😁

Time. Most working age people just don’t have enough. Scouting is pretty full on and I imagine some older volunteers just aren’t physically up to the demands. Camps, etc. are a huge commitment.

@PuttingDownRoots we sent two at 10 just before the half term as we were at capacity for our group. Now the “main” leader is saying we aren’t sending the next lot until at least 10.5, means my son is “stuck” without his friends (he’s a late birthday) for 10 months. the double standards are annoying

Most people who volunteer work full-time and are incredibly busy people. This idea that everyone volunteering is not working and has loads of time, simply is not true.

I think this is true. I like camping but they had a week hiking in the mountains, no bathrooms! I couldn't cope and they wouldn't want me there anyway. 😁

@YerAWizardHarrymany groups near us are struggling to move cubs up into scouts as the scout section is full and scouts stay on for 4 years not 2 like cubs. In the past a number of scouts leave early as it is not seen as ‘cool’ but we haven’t had that this year. Scout leaders are leaving instead!

If I hadn’t had to waste 20 years of my life paying rent to private landlords, I wouldn’t now be having to work as hard to overpay an inflated mortgage, and I would have time to volunteer as well as more time to help my own child.

Are the middle and upper classes beginning to have the faintest glimmerings of an idea about the impact of impoverishing most of Britain’s non-inheriting working class, so that they could waste it on their overseas experiences??

Ah Scouts is our smallest section by far! Think they have less than 20. We are at 36 for both Cubs and Beavers

@Swissnotswiss I don’t camp but happy to help during the day. However, if a trowel is involved (no toilets) I don’t help!

I have and do still volunteer but not with children. I was contemplating it.

My friend works with school age teenagers and the legislation plus the amount of complication because so many kids have identity issues has made her job become incredibly difficult. She does actually have volunteers, they are retired teachers, it’s an educational charity. A volunteer lent a child a pound in front of a huge group of other children so they could buy a drink from a vending machine as had forgotten their money. Some little know it all accused them of grooming. The volunteer was devastated. I’m not putting myself at risk from shit like that.

I welcome children having voices these days but something has gone wrong somewhere.

One of the reasons she may move at Easter is she is currently the eldest with one other a similar age (who will also get the chance). The next one isn't 10 until end of August. They might move up at 10 as well to create space. Weve got an uneven bulge in age created by Covid.

I think some of it is that it's outside the norm for the UK kids activities to be volunteer run. I have lots of American family and there almost everything is volunteer run - if you want your kid to play a sport, you are signing up to volunteer. They find the fact that we just pay for some activities and that's it quite strange. I think it means that you get into that mindset with everything.

For us, I freely admit it's not that we absolutely couldn't volunteer, it's just not very convenient. My DH takes ours while I put the little one to bed, he uses the time to log back onto work in a local cafe. If he volunteered instead, he would have to pick up work in the evening instead. We would reconsider if they were desperate for volunteers but weirdly they have volunteers but not enough children!

My experience is the same as yours. Thinking about the guide/brownie/rainbow volunteers in my town - many of us work full time, many of us have children, some have both, yet we all manage to find time to volunteer.

I'm lucky with my Brownies group as the parents are great and if we asked them to volunteer infrequently, most would, although not many people choose to do it on a regular basis.

I think the opportunity to jack it in is a big driver. I have always volunteered in children's activities, and as you know once you start, it is hard to leave. Groups closed over lockdown and I left, it was an easy break. I miss some of the kids, but I do not miss the hassle from some parents.

Apologies as Ive only skim read the thread, but I think this problem is going to get worse in the coming years as people are forced to work until 67, rather than 60.

In our scouts there are a few scouting families where there is an ethos of being involved in scouting and volunteering. However there's a big issue because the older generation are now mid 70s+ and finding the overnight camps etc. too much for them. The generation behind is involved but there isn't enough of them and people's lives are busier than they used to be with most people in demanding full time jobs and no chance of retirement until late 60s.

I was group secretary for a couple of years when DS was a member of cubs. It was fine but there was this perennial push to get you to do more and a slight lack of recognition of what you were actually doing.

I honestly don't know how they're going to survive over the coming years and I totally respect any group leaders - its a huge task and so valuable for the DCs. On a similar thread to this, someone suggested getting the older teens involved actively as being the way forward and that's maybe the way to go.