Aibu to not help Scouts…

[SecretsOfSunshine]

Name changed as identifiable.

Ive caused a bit of fall out, and didn’t expect it. I’m a bit of an accidental scout leader, not the main Akela but there weekly. My children went through scouts, the youngest is aging out. I’ve always been happy enough to help, I like kids. It’s not however something I’m hugely attached to either. I stayed mainly as they were short of leaders, and I enjoy it enough when there.

A parent complained that at camp they are feeding and housing the adults, we don’t pay to attend camps and we do eat.

Group section leader agreed, apparently other local packs do charge leaders for food over the weekend.

I didn’t get funny or stroppy, but I did say I’m out for camps. I said I don’t mind giving up my time, but it was a line for me to give up my weekend and pay for the pleasure. If I ate at home (large family) my food costs no where near the cost as the difference between cooking 5/6 portions is absorbed in the weekly food bill the same. Plus the scouts tend to overbuy and spend a lot more than is really needed tbh.

Another leader has now contacted me to say how strongly they disagree with me, also that I’m jeopardising the camp as they are already short on leaders. GSL has implied if I’m not committed maybe I should leave. Parents are moaning apparently.

The more I think the more pissed off I am. Tbh I’m ready to leave anyone between the increase in behaviour issues and local politics in the district. Camps have a horrible side of severe sleep deprivation and I also sometimes lose work shifts going or family commitments.

Is it really normal to begrudge volunteers their food and board in exchange for a weekend away for £50 and amazing activities laid on? I know when I was a teacher we were also included in costs spread among the kids. With 30/40 kids it’s hardly the bulk of the bill either

@UsingChangeofName

I used to do cheap, cheap camps. Scout campsites, other group scout halls. I managed to do them all without charging a single leader.

It's not simplistic, it's about budgeting properly, which is something I don't think the Nights Away Permit does in the same amount of detail as when I did mine.

No not really. It's down to management by groups themselves.

We look for grants for equipment. Places like the CoOp and Tesco schemes for customers are really good places to start as not many people tend to apply. I know we've been pretty successful with those.

Then doing fundraising events through the year. Our group has one big annual fundraiser that's it - everyone is expected to contribute in some way for obvious reasons.

It helps that we own our own premises too so have to pay nominal fees for the use of the building and the building is hired out to the public the rest of the time. I know other groups in district have higher rental fees and/or don't have income like this (however I should add that last year the maintenance and repayment of the loan of the building was greater than the group's income so in practice it made a loss for the first time). This kind of highlights the problems groups face. No camp is 'free' in terms of site fees because of these costs too.

We've had poorer groups 'piggie back' on certain activities we've done to help with costs too.

You have to have a few financially savvy leaders as a result of this stuff. Ime I've found guide leaders to generally not be as practical in terms of this kind of stuff. The guides we share use of the building with are utterly useless and not remotely proactive and we've ended up almost having to bail them out. They don't have a shortage of brownies and guides. They have a shortage of parents willing to get involved (again that comes down to the attitude of the group leader not being strict with parents in terms of their shared responsibility to enable the group to function better and spread the load). I think the best one I've had is them asking me to become a leader for them! I don't have a daughter and I'm a Scouting widow as it is!!!

I asked DH about this a while back. My understanding you set a budget and then you have to keep to it. So Leader Fred might set a budget of £12 per head for food and he does that, buying his sausages from the local (expensive) butcher for twice the price of Aldi and gets his night away permit. But Leader Joe decides his Scouts can't afford that. He sets a budget of £6 but if it ends up with it costing £6.50 he wouldn't get his permit. DH said there was no emphasis on being aware of cash strapped families in the permit and leaders are free to set their own budget and food budget preferences.

It has boiled our piss because we have a Leader Fred who has bought the said butchers sausages before - we view it poorly as he's spending other people's money which they can't control. Meanwhile Leader Toothbrush's Mrs Red manages to keep the cost of food down to £6.50 (I think the budget last time was £7.50).

If you have two kids going on camp, that's £11 right there. It does add up.

The value of your time that you are giving for free is worth a lot more than the costs of most trips. I don't think you should pay unless it's something that is abroad or very costly. Even then it's fair if your place is subsidised.

If it so happens that the unit is in a very depreived area but you as a leader are wealthy, then you may decide to contribute more but that should be a personal choice. I certainly wouldn't be paying to go on trips so that children from better off families than my own can save a few quid.

I think it's really important that you tell the other leaders and parents exactly why you are no longer doing trips, rahther than just quietly retiring. Let them realise how short sighted they are being

You reply by text /email: ‘I don’t understand why it would be maybe not going ahead, did that moaning parent not volunteer their time and money? Tell them it’s a fun new hobby. If you’re all right that it’s perfectly reasonable to charge leaders then you should be inundated with volunteers. We aren’t all as wealthy as everyone else here and there is no way I’m going after this fun little game of making me feel like shit for having a budget.’

RedToothBrush - That’s what I was trying (inarticulately) to say. There are cultural differences between Scouting and Guiding and I was impressed (and envious) that Scouting had very clear expectations of help from parents and structured units in such a way that the admin load didn’t all fall on the leader in charge. I’d therefore have assumed that Scouting would have been better than we were at securing grants etc for camps, without expecting leaders to pay.

I once volunteered to go along as a parent helper for a beaver camp. One couple asked if they could drop their child off three hours before drop off time (straight from school on a Friday) so they could ‘make the most of having childcare’.

The child was possibly the naughtiest boy I’ve ever met. He also didn’t bring any pyjamas or a sleeping bag. Anyway, we coped. Until 11pm when he couldn’t sleep because he was crying in agony with toothache. We tried everything but in the end we phoned his dad to come to camp (it was only three miles from home) and he absolutely sped up, raging, in his pants in his Subaru, chucked a syringe of calpol down the kid’s throat, got back in his car and fucked off. We actually had to phone him to come back and pick his child up and take him home.

but to be relentless in pursuing grants and other funding

........... which needs someone to have the capacity (time, capability, skills) to do that.

As I've said throughout the thread, I've argued for decades this ought to be the starting point (that no Leader pays), and that in the OP's case it is clear there are no excuses, but there's a lot of naivety on this thread, about the reality for huge numbers of volunteers, who always pay for at least their food on camp.

Totally agree, especially with this part

I think it's really important that you tell the other leaders and parents exactly why you are no longer doing trips, rather than just quietly retiring. Let them realise how short sighted they are being

Incidentally... patents who don't have the time or don't want to volunteer directly with children... pursuing grants and helping with fundraising is something you can do to help.

Our Group treasurer and secretary are absolute angels and are very good at finding funding and donations both big and small.

I'm a ex-brownie leader, I stopped when I had my first DC, and I will probably go back to volunteering when my daughter joins. We did several camps/sleepovers and there was never any suggestion of leaders paying for food. I seem to remember I took some treats for us to have after the kids were asleep. I just can't believe the attitude of the parents. I would also not attend.

You reply by text /email: ‘I don’t understand why it would be maybe not going ahead, did that moaning parent not volunteer their time and money? Tell them it’s a fun new hobby. If you’re all right that it’s perfectly reasonable to charge leaders then you should be inundated with volunteers.

I’d be tempted to reply with something along these lines

It's often the most affluent parents that are most money grabbing in my experience.

Lower income parents often assume everyone is struggling like they are and wouldn't take money from others. Socialist attitude all in this together.
Rich people assume everyone can afford to pay and their priorty is making sure you keep whats yours, Tory attitude its my money I'm keeping it.
I stress these are generalisations....there are obviously a proportion of exceptions in each group.

We are middle incomewouldI would assume leaders get paid any expenses on top of the "free" trip. Taking time off work to go on a camp is an incredible sacrifice

I don’t think you need to be in scouts to meet parents who think you must be desperate to look after their children.
I lost a friend when it became clear I wasn’t interested in taking her 2 (incredibly difficult) children for the weekend so she could have a mini break with her DH.

I agree.

There are a chort that believe parents who volunteer/coach "adore children and have little else going on in their lives, so have the time".🤨

Some years ago my tennis club set up a Saturday afternoon fun tennis and was massively subscribed to.
It was made clear it would be parent run and all parents would need to do their part on a rota.
The excuses started, parents not turning up etc.
It was quickly established by a core group of parents that the vast majority wanted to drop and run.

We were not prepared to give up multiple Saturday afternoons a month and commit to it, so it was quickly cancelled with regret.

Que HUGE disappointment 🙄.

A few of us instead booked a couple of courts and played with our children every few Saturday afternoons.

After being seen a few times playing we had a couple of CF ask could their children join ours as THEY played a game themselves.... AKA free babysitting🙄.

We played really confused as to EXACTLY what they were asking and said "eh no, we are NOT looking after extra children while we play with OUR children".

Complete CF's.

This was not a unique experience.

Some parents believe volunteering is beneath them.

A friend in Canada said if your child wanted to participate in a sport or activity you as a parent had to take an active role in facilitating it for everyone. Sounded much fairer to me than saints like the op slaving away and everyone else doing drop and run.

That doesn't always work as well as people think it should.

A group I was involved tried that and all that happened was on some weeks you had parents who just weren't interested involved. Then on other weeks you had parent who, frankly shouldn't have been anywhere near a group of children there helping out.

I've also dealt with a "fundraising enthusiast" who was utterly hopeless and a parent who said they'd contact local businesses for donations and help and were so aggressive in their approach we actually lost contacts we'd had for years.

Unwilling helpers are often worse than no help at all

Forced "volunteering" doesn't work for lots of reasons. It's also hard to enforce.
We did try it at the club I help run at one point as we were often low on marshals for competitions. We said that every competitor in the series had to provide someone to marshal at one event. Not a big ask, but people just didn't comply. And whilst we would have been within our rights to refuse entries on that basis, some of the kids are as young as six. Who is going to refuse to let an excited young child compete in something they love because their parents are feckless? I could never bring myself to turn a child away for something they have absolutely no control over. Perhaps I'm just too soft and if I'd stood my ground it would have worked. But for me, the whole point in volunteering is to benefit the kids and whilst I have no problem at all disciplining them if they misbehave themselves, it just doesn't sit right with me to punish them for their parents' failings.

Just off the top of my head I can think of five of my Cubs whose parents would struggle to volunteer. Not due to fecklessness, just life, like disabled siblings.

Plus having a parent around ruins the dynamic. We actually discourage parents volunteering with their child's section if possible. I celebrated when my younger child graduated out of Cubs into Scouts so she wasn't my responsibility anymore.

You are too soft 😉

Seriously groups need to set out expectations for parents from the start and understand that participation isn't optional. No volunteering no place for your kid. Otherwise EVERYONE ends up losing out as parents get fed up by the shirkers and drop out of volunteering too and the group goes bump.

Our experience is the richer the parents the more they just want to buy their place (not at going rates of course!). They don't want to volunteer because their time is too precious to waste on their own kids. The more deprived areas of district have less issues with leaders because they know alternatives aren't available to them putting in the effort. Those troops struggle more with finances.

Our group would definitely make some exceptions for mitigating circumstances. But we'd probably expect some assistance. Even if it was to make a cake for a fundraiser. We have a couple of people who do admin and don't have contact with the kids at all.

There's always ways that you can help.

YANBU at all. I'm an accidental leader in girlguiding and I can just about afford to pay for my daughter's subs and to go on the trips etc. There's absolutely no way I could afford to pay for myself as well, never mind the fact I'd be paying for the "pleasure" of working bloody hard the entire time 😬

Where are you going to get mysterious volunteers from if it's not parents?!!! There are some very elderly leaders across district who quite frankly can't do a lot of the more physical stuff anymore but they control their groups and there's no progression plan for leaders. These groups are at risk of folding in the future.

Seriously! Our group prefers leaders children to have at least some activity/opportunity away from their parent but it cant be avoided at times.

In an ideal world... Except it's not ideal.

We never discouraged parent helpers because without them we'd have folded.

However, we did allocate adults on trips to groups that didn't include their own child and regular helpers were encouraged to help at bits of the session that their child was least likely to want to do.

Sometimes it can't be helped though

It's amazing how many of the parents complained about the trip thing. Although they soon grumblingly accepted it when I explained that the three more serious problems we had on trips were caused by parents who had their own child in their group.

I haven't rtft because I think the first reply summed it up - fuck them.

I'd resign and make it widely known that this was the 'last straw' - along with the behaviour issues you mentioned.

I'm shocked that parents have raised this, despite your huge time commitment and the cost of turning down paid working shifts to attend. What an appalling sense of entitlement and disrespect. Fuck 'em.