Is uniform in Girlguides compulsory?

[GirlGuidesUniform]

8yo DD.

I work on Brownies night, so I get her from after school club (who feed her for me), then she takes off school cardigan and wears the Brownies hoodie on top of her uniform for the meeting - she then has a clean school uniform the next day.

She does have a tshirt she wears for weekend events and camps and also a cap she uses for school. Also if a message comes out for full uniform, for example at Christmas when they sang in town or in summer when they did a walk around town I always try and work around it (e.g. the walk around town I asked if she could wear her school trousers and asked the TA running ASC very very nicely if DD could change into her tshirt and hoodie before I picked her up but they can’t do this all the time as the club is open until 6pm and is packed until then so they can’t be changing 50+ kids clothes all the time)

Brown Owl is now saying DD needs to be in proper uniform from after Easter. I asked what this meant and she said brownies tshirt (either long or short sleeve), brownies hoodie or gilet and either brownies trousers or brownies shorts.

I am happy to buy shorts and/or trousers for events but if she has to wear full uniform every week she’ll have to give up, which seems unfair as she absolutely loves Brownies. This is the only group that I can get her to, as it starts at 6pm, I finish work at 5pm and then have 30 minutes commute on public transport, then a walk to the school. If we went home first to change we’d be late for Brownies which I’ve done a few times when unavoidable but DD hates being late.

I’m a single parent so no other help. I drive but don't currently have a car as due to COL I just can't afford it.

This is the only out of school activity DD does due to me working so much so seems a shame to make her give it up.

Is the uniform compulsory? I always thought that the way we did it was fine, but happy to be told wrong

GirlGuiding Scotland webshop are usually a good source of small and indeed larger sized uniforms. They currently have 18" waist leggings and 22" chest tops... not sure what that equates to...

Update:

Have spoken to Brown Owl again. We've compromised on the trousers, DD can wear trousers to school that day and we'll just change into tshirt and hoodie in the leisure centre before we go into Brownies hut apparently DD is not the only one who does this.

Glad you have a sensible solution OP

Hell no! Inclusivity is something Girlguiding are not keen on. Have a read of this https://www.girlguiding.org.uk/globalassets/docs-and-resources/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-and-inclusion-audit-report.pdf

I'd say my personal experience of seeing disabled children discriminated against, and Girlguiding not caring would suggest it's actually got worse, not better since this audit.

"Therefore sweeping generalisations about Brownies not being inclusive "

But it's true, as an organisation, isn't it? Individuals might not be discriminatory nasties, but as an organisation, it seems happy to be so.

As a leader who started as a leader almost 20 years ago I raised concerns about many issues in our area, including discrimination, particularly with regards to a girl with Down's syndrome. I thought they'd respond constructively to improve matters, as a normal organisation would. Their response was to exclude both my children and I from Girlguiding, and ban me from talking to any members of Girlguiding or their parents. As far as I know, two years on, they've still not investigated my concerns. The girl with Down's syndrome was forced to leave within about 4-6 weeks of me being excluded (she'd only had about 1.5 terms of Brownies at this stage). I get that Girlguiding is made up of a lot of volunteers with a variety of skills and attitudes, including to groups such as disabled children, BAME children, children with ASNs and children of single parents. But when the organisation behaves like this in response to someone raising a concern, it does make you think that the organisation is institutionally discriminatory against minority groups.

Fellow Guider here. My tuppence worth- once we have seen child in uniform and made a big fuss of said rainbow -regardles if granny ,santa bought or came out our 2nd hand stock we then expect child to appear in uniform and eventually query as we are a uniformed organisation . We have had kids turn up in school uniform and good clothes and gone home covered in food colouring, glue ,oil, glitter etc. Oh dear too bad that's why we ask you to wear the same clothes each week to Rainbows. Your Brown Owl may be like ours and our Guide and Ranger leader and does inspections for pack or patrol points

Oh and if you cannot get this resolved you are entitled to go up the chain. District Commissioner 》Division com 》 County com

I usually failed the inspection. 😂 no idea how I made sixer! (Gnomes) Imagine trying to explain to kids today about the 20p for a phone call.

Im a rainbow rather than brownies leader but if you look on the guiding online shop the contact details will be on there. They do have smaller and bigger uniforms. They are always helpful when I contact them.

Not read the whole report thing, but one of the first main complaints is "Christian undertones". Isn't it supposed to be a Christian organisation? And since when has that been a problem?

In response to Eggybrains

I thought the old Brownies uniform was absolutely vile as a little kid, it was the major thing that put me off the organisation. It was bad enough having to wear bottle green and grey at school, I was certainly not going to wear poo brown on my own time.

The newer one is much nicer and always looks really comfortable. I wish school uniforms were designed more along those lines, or didn't exist at all. Hope you can work something out re changing, but I agree that full uniform seems ott for regular meetings. In Guides only the t-shirt is compulsory, DD2 always wore plain black leggings with it. Good job as the uniform skirts are really odd.

I'm a beaver leader . I couldn't give a shit if they turn up week in-week out in uniform. They're turning up, their parents are doing their best.

Remembrance Sunday and parade days they need to be in proper uniform.

But to wazz about in a church hall for an hour in a Tuesday evening? It's no biggie as far as I'm concerned.

Exactly! As a youth group leader, you're more concerned that everyone is there, safe and having fun!

This message caught my eye, as we have had a girl with Down's syndrome in my Guide unit for over ten years. She came as a ten year old, and we worked with her and her mum to ensure she had the best possible experience at weekly meetings, as well as being able to access the full range of outings, events and holidays. She is at college now, but still comes back to see us sometimes 🤗

During the same period, we have had a lot of girls with a wide range of additional needs, and again, we have done our absolute best to make everything as accessible, welcoming and inclusive as possible.

Guiding is not a Christian organisation

My two use to go straight from after school and just got themselves changed in the toilet can she not do this?

No. They're quite anti-this it seems. For example: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6500215/Girl-guide-leader-claims-sacked-letting-children-use-axed-promise-love-God.html
You're not allowed to let a girl promise to "do her duty to God" or any mention of God in her promise.

The bits that caught my eye from the report were discrimination against disabled and BAME girls. For example calling a black girl "the N word" is abhorrent in my view. I think I last heard reference to this in GCSE history when learning about Rosa Parkes - that was a very long time ago. Re: Christian undertones - I think it's more seen as Islamophobic sometimes rather than Christian, and some examples of this like muslim girls being told to remove headscarves were picked up on in the press. The bit Girlguiding decided to focus on was the trans bit, and it appears to me that they wanted to ignore the other bits.

This is great @anotherguideleader, and I'm so pleased you did this for her, thank you.

I think this is the problem with Girlguiding. It's made up of loads and loads of volunteers with different skills and attitudes, which has the potential to be great. But when something goes wrong - for example discriminating against people with protected characteristics, which is unlawful it's not addressed and resolved by HQ, whose job it is to resolve. Just piss off and don't tell anyone what we're like.

I raised lots of concerns. Our DC was clearly struggling and needed support - I think she was effectively a single mum aged 19-ish who'd left school with a certificate in cake decorating. I'm sure she could manage, but she needed support. I don't feel ill will to her - it's not her fault she needed support and GG failed to provide it. This used to be addressed with very sensible county commissioners who stepped in occasionally when she was not doing things correctly. Those county commissioners then stepped down and I became acutely aware of how much stuff was going wrong, and frankly how unsafe it was.

I'm aware of absolutely brilliant and talented leaders and commissioners who would never let this stuff happen. It sounds like you're one of those leaders, and I'm so grateful for people like you. But inclusion and keeping girls safe needs to happen consistently, not just when a girl with a disability wants to come to your unit which sits in an area with commissioners who do things as they should.

gosh there's a lot of negativity on this thread.

Back to the OP it's not a Christian organisation but does have lots of members of Christian (and other faiths).

It's a little odd OP to join up dd to a uniformed organisation and then complain about having to wear a uniform..

I have had girl join our unit with various ASD or other needs, as a leader I speak to the parents to see what the girl needs and think about how we can support her to enjoy the group. Sadly some parents of children with quite significant needs don't say a bloody word and merrily drop their DD off. We are then struggling to support the child and the child is obviously struggling too. I think parents think we have some magical skills and psychic abilities. I do not. I'm not a teacher or a SEN worker, I'm a mum who volunteers.

I had one mum do this to me, it turned out the child had a 1-2-1 at school and lots of other things put in place their to help her. After a stressful time and mum eventually admitting this (why would she not say?!!) I asked her to help us find another volunteer to be her 1-2-1 for the hour. She said no and said I had to do it, I don't have a magical pool of volunteers and need help to recruit, I have 4 children of my own and a full time job and I volunteer. I'm not sure what someone in an office in HQ could have done about that, nothing - I needed communication/help from the parent. Too much is put on volunteers and it's very stressful.

I'm a Beaver 'assistant leader' or whatever the exact terminology is (I should know really!) and we always ask for top + necker, which seems fair enough to me. Even at evening meetings we get ours outside as much as we can, so it's just a handy visual aid.

If we're going any further than the (enclosed/locked in) play area then we do recommend the jumper.

But to be fair, when they've got coats on it doesn't make much difference to being able to spot a rogue beaver in the wild😅

@leaderofthelittles I agree mum should have told you of the additional support needs. However, what I think you're saying is exactly one of the issues with GG. Are you saying you said to mum she couldn't attend if mum didn't find a 1-to-1 helper for her? This seems to be what happened here and you can see the result https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43519296

Unless this has changed very recently, GG does not give leaders Equality and Diversity training, and as a result my experience is that even very senior members of GG do not understand their obligations under the Equality Act, or even what direct and indirect discrimination is. This isn't really an issue with individual leaders, but an issue with GG letting its leaders do what they like in terms of discriminating against disabled people, because they haven't told their leaders what discrimination can look like.

The Equality Act doesn't say you need to find an additional volunteer for your Brownie, but it does say GG needs to consider and if possible try to make reasonable adjustments. If you really can't get someone to help her and keep her safe, that's different, but you need to show you have tried. When I say you I mean you as an organisation, ie GG, not you as an individual. I don't mean her mum. Your commissioner and GG should try to support and help you. It seems even commissioners don't know about things like this https://www.girlguiding.org.uk/information-for-volunteers/running-your-unit/finance-insurance-and-property/grants-and-funding/fund-for-members-with-disabilities/ and https://www.girlguiding.org.uk/globalassets/docs-and-resources/volunteer-roles/individual-support-unit-helper-role-description.pdf

I appreciate you're a mum and a volunteer. I started doing this 20 years ago, work full time, have kids, other volunteer roles and everything else, so I get that. But if you take this role on, you need to meet the legal obligations of it, which include not discriminating against a girl because she's disabled and making reasonable adjustments to enable her to attend. You can't just opt out of legal obligations because you're not being paid. But this approach isn't your fault - it's Girlguiding for consistently failing to get messages like this out to its leaders, which results in an unsafe discriminatory organisation.

@Eggybrains your comment is just really upsetting and attitudes like that are the reason we are haemorrhaging leaders. I made every adjustment for the girl I possibly could. I had a young leader 1-2-1 with her but it was clear she needed an adult helper. I tried to recruit another helper. When is there is no one willing to help either to be there or to recruit including the child's own parent I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do and if I'm liable to be sued like you say I won't be able to do it anymore.

Parents just don't want to give or help. In my area they have subs and that's that. I won't carry on much longer, it's my community I need support from not HQ.