Rainbows (Girl Guides) - all my daughter wants for Christmas is to be included in your organisation.

[TwinkleChristmasStar]

Hi, my 6 year old daughter has been attending her local Rainbows unit since January. She has Type 1 Diabetes and Coeliac Disease.

In October she was invited to the ultimate event for a 'grown up' Rainbow - the Sleepover! Of course she wanted to go. We, and her medical team saw no reason why she could not attend. The venue is just 13 minutes away from home (the usual Rainbows meeting place is 9 minutes away).

The response from the Guiders when we said she would like to attend, was that DD was a "horrific responsibility," and that we had been expected to decline the invitation.

We are now nearly 3 months into the complaints procedure. We have offered numerous ways we can help facilitate our daughter being included, including us staying close by (there is no room for one of us to stay on site), doing her medication, providing food, being on call etc.

Our first complaint got upheld, however, we were told that DD still could not go on the sleepover :(

The complaint report also revealed other failures such as no risk assessments for weekly meetings.
We have made subsequent formal complaints of a Failure to Make Reasonable Adjustments, and of Disability Discrimination. These to date have been ignored.

At no point has anyone asked what our child's needs actually are.

Since all the complaints went in, there has been a further incident. We phoned to check that it would be ok for DD to attend the last meeting before Christmas, given the issues surrounding weekly meetings. We offered to stay either on site or close by. We were told by Girl Guide HQ that the meeting was cancelled due to a leader being ill. The story did not add up. I was passing the meeting hall on the way home, and so I pulled in. Within a few minutes, some leaders arrived, followed by the Rainbows, and then more leaders. It appears that DD was purposely excluded.

There is more detail about all of this here on my Blog.

We realise that as a whole Girl Guides can be inclusive, however after nearly three months, nothing has been resolved, and our complaints remain unanswered.

Our daughter is incredibly brave. She does not deserve to be treated like this. She just wants to be with her friends at Rainbows. We also hope that we can prevent this happening to any other child in future.

move her to cubs/beavers. My girls had a shocking time in rainbows so we moved them to cubs and they have been brilliant. Really good with dd3 who has special needs too.

All that was necessary was for the leader to talk to the OP at the start about how to include her DD and ensure her safety rather than simply exclude her and refuse to take her even after the original complaint was upheld.

The OP offered many possible solutions yet no one was interested in including her DD.

Do people really think this is an acceptable way for members of an organisation to behave?

Complaining about a national chai no fb is very different from this

How?

How many leaders of voluntary groups are reading this and thinking about throwing in the towel in case they find themselves plastered all over social media if they make one mistake? I know I am.

Another Guider for whom it didn't even cross my mind.

I'm not the best Guider in the world, but I know for sure that if a child wanted to join my unit who had a chronic health condition or disability I, and my other leader's would do everything we possibly could to involve that child in all the activities we organise. If one child couldn't do an activity for whatever reason then none of the girls would do it, we simply would not set a child up to fail or to be excluded. It goes against everything that Girlguiding stands for.

I'm not sure if it has been mentioned by any other of the Guiders on this thread but when you become an adult leader within Girlguiding you make your promise too. You stand up in front of the girls and other leaders and you promise out loud to do your best, to serve your community (or old school like me your country) and to help other people. In 2010 all members of Gurlguiding remade their promise as part of the centenary.

These leaders have broken their promise, and they've broken it to a six year old child, a child who has already living with two chronic health conditions.

This situation should not be hidden and brushed under the carpet. Girlguiding UK need to step up and apologise and then make a stand that this sort of behaviour by their adult leaders will NOT be tolerated.

WeeFreeKings, just to pick up on your point about GG being a Christian based organisation, it isn't anymore.

In 1994 the promise change from 'doing duty to God' to 'love my God' to encompass women and girls from all faiths. In 2013 after a long discussion process within the organisation all references to God were removed and we now promise 'to be true to myself and develop my beliefs.'

The guiding movement should also forgiving of mistakes, and is full of inherently good people, this guider too. What if she took to facebook about the issue, but then she couldn't could she due to confidentiality and safeguarding. A national chain is different provided an individual isn't vilified.

What if she took to facebook about the issue

You mean like "I can't believe a parent complained about me discriminating against their child because she is diabetic and has coeliac disease?"

This is not a "mistake" anyway. Mistakes happen once and are rectified and/or apologised for.

Under the disability act it's about making reasonable adjustments. It seems to me that there has been no discussion with the parents by the leaders to establish whether reasonable adjustments could be made to make it work and to me that is the essence of the discrimination.

Perhaps the leaders think there is a potential problem that they cannot overcome but if they don't discuss things with the parents then it just seems like they don't want to make it inclusive.

Nobody has been named here.

I also cannot believe that a grown woman allowing her prejudice and narrowness of thought to impact on a six year old is an 'inherently good person'.

We only have one side. The leader may have been told to say nothing after legal advice - who knows?

Of course this is different from complaining about a national organisation. This is about one woman who made a bad decision. Maybe before that there were years of good service but in this situation she felt inadequate and didn't have the confidence to do the right thing.

So many on this thread are coming across as holier than thou and incapable of making mistakes.

Maybe I'm the only one worried about the effect it's having on this woman. And I am very worried.

I do think it's relevant that they are volunteers. There's simply not the training, experience, resources and support available. Ideally, there should be, but in reality, there isn't always.

I'm not denying the situation has been handled very badly. Lying about the meeting is just shocking and quite inexcusable.

As a former beaver and cubs leader I can say we would have done everything to be inclusive. One of the wonderful things about the movement is that it is at its very core to be inclusive.

Reading this thread brought back the experience I had with one of our senior scout leaders. I was only sixteen or seventeen at the time, an assistant leader. This man in question handled a difficult situation with one of our cubs very badly. Not disability related, but equally sensitive. In trying to make things better, he made more bad choices, and the situation got worse and worse until it got completely out of hand.

This leader was not a bad man at all. He had the best intentions, but was faced with a situation he didn't know how to deal with and ended up doing the wrong things. Mostly, it was a lot of misunderstanding, awkwardness knowing he was wrong but not knowing what to do. A relatively minor thing became a big and difficult problem.

It was eventually sorted out with the parents satisfactorily, who were thankfully understanding. There was no harm done in the end The cub in question remained a member for many years, graduated to scouts and eventually became a leader himself.

Unfortunately, another parent, whose child wasn't even involved in this, decided to take offence and rather than approaching the leader, or the district, he began a witch hunt against the leader. This was before social media, but the parent in question was a member of the local council (elected representative) so he did a lot of damage. The leader lost his job and his girlfriend amongst other things. It was awful seeing a person whom I knew to be kind and good person so distressed. Yes, he had messed up but he didn't deserve this.

And that's why I don't think social media should be involved. This isn't some big faceless company. These are people. Yes, they made bad decisions and may or may not have had good intentions. Do they really deserve their private lives to be impacted by this? Obviously, my experience was an extreme one, but the leaders in OP's might well be quite distressed by the turn this whole thing has taken. An initial bad decision, the response to that handled badly, it can easily spiral out of control. No excuse but a witch hunt isn't the answer. What's needed is support and education so that this situation can be avoided in the future.

I'm sure the leader wasn't told to hold a secret meeting. If she was then that's exactly the sort of thing that should be dealt with openly. If they hadn't been so determined to exclude a child & so uninterested in finding a workable solution then they wouldn't be in this situation. The leader is not the victim here.

The leader is not the victim here.

So she deserves all she gets? I don't think so.

Yeah, I'm finding it really hard to see the view that the leader is the victim, too. Because this wasn't a one off incident. It's been months of repeated ad decisions.

Don't forget social media happened after months of going through appropriate channels and receiving no response.

No, Sunna. She deserves being made accountable for her actions.
If she didn't do that through the appropriate channels then I can understand a parent using other methods to hold her to account.

She's not 'getting' anything. After months of getting nowhere it's gone to social media - this has always been the case (although previously it wAs the local rag that might have been approached). All she had to do was not discriminate or lie about meetings.

She may have been told to say nothing. We don't know. We only know one side. It's probably been kicked higher up the chain.

On the face if it the situation is appalling but trial by media, social or otherwise, is not the right way to go when there are well-meaning people involved. As eloquently demonstrated by Cleio.

And fwiw I'm the chair of a voluntary organisation that provides support for disabled children and we are to going to the media & social media about the way council employees have behaved towards is. We only haven't because a local councillor had taken on the case for us (& he has told the employees they'll look idiotic in the press). Our reason for approaching the press & using social media wouldn't be to humiliate employees but to get a suitable outcome for the disabled children we have been fundraising for. We would use those methods because they work when other methods haven't.

I'm really surprised by this. I am a Guide leader and over the years have had several girls with significant needs. The only reason we would ever have for excluding a child from an event would be behaviour (by that I don't mean children who have more challenging behaviour as a result of SN - we would put things in place for that, but would exclude a child for bullying, abuse towards leaders etc).

It is a massive responsibility to take children with disabilities or illnesses away, but with the correct training it is one I am happy to take on. I would expect a parent to provide me with full details of the care their child needs. On difficulty I sometimes face is whether to offer trips organised at region level that I know a couple wouldn't be able to go on due to their disability. For example, one girl uses a device to control a medical condition that cannot get wet and as such she can't go swimming. I never know whether I should offer water sports trips as I know she couldn't attend (not that we would stop her - if she wanted to come for the experience and just watch the others in the water we would happily take her). She comes on land based residential trips as she can remove it for showers etc.

The only difficulty we have is leader numbers. We have a girl who needs 1-1 supervision at all times. At weekly meetings this is fine - we have to have 2 leaders anyway so even if I only have the minimum one week, my other leader can supervise this child and I can manage the rest (I am a teacher so large numbers of children are normal for me). When we have residential trips, her mum comes too (she is a registered helper, DBS checked etc). Her mum isn't tied to her at all times, it could be another leader and then her mum is deployed elsewhere. There are times we would really struggle if her mum didn't come - not because we don't want the child there but because we don't have the manpower to cope.

It sounds like this has been handled really badly. I would be interested to hear the leaders' reasons for the exclusion of your daughter.

Paid staff are very different to volunteers, employees have far more support, training and backup usually. Plus they receive a salary to compensate for the work done.

Given its the OPs first post it would suggest the thread has been designed to get at the volunteers on a wider network than just Facebook and blogs. Perhaps the volunteers are being dignified and ignoring the vilification or perhaps they know nothing of it.

A quick look and the GGUK have a contact us option, perhaps linking them to the thread so a whole picture is known rather than just one side would be a good idea plus they can have their legal team check with regards to facts etc against the volunteer. Had the volunteer been hiding meetings etc I'm pretty sure they would have changed leaders.

Lefty Because this wasn't a one off incident. It's been months of repeated ad decisions.

I'm really not sure that is the case. The OP wrote up thread:

DD has been attending since January. She has been included in unit meetings. They have accommodated her well in cooking activities with gluten free flour. They have treated her for hypos in the past.

The leaders clearly had a good approach to handling her issues on a weekly basis. It's all rather baffling.

The reason this thread was started was because of lack of communication at ALL levels from start to finish. We have been promised phone and e-mail responses soon, or next week, or even today or 'this afternoon'.

We have made numerous suggestions of how we can help the leaders but no one is meeting us in the middle. As stated before no one has even asked us what DD's needs actually are.

The local leaders passed us on to the District Commissioner (we believe she is now the County Commissioner). Our formal complaint at the same time also got passed to the DC from the then (departing) CC. GGHQ asked to be cc-ed into everything. We strongly suspect the DC has to wait for instruction from HQ.

I'm sure the employees we are in battle with would say they're 'well meaning'. Unfortunately they have also behaved appallingly (lied to us - as revealed by a FOI request - and repeatedly stalled & seem to have forgotten that disabled children are affected by their decisions). People who are well meaning put the child at the centre of their decision making,forget their egos & work with parents to find a solution - and really a diabetic pump shouldn't be that difficult when the parents are happy to come in & do the tricky bit - they don't start lying & refusing to budge.