Joining Enquiry Policy

As Scouts, we believe in preparing young people with skills for life. We encourage young people to do more, learn more and be more. Each week, we help our members enjoy fun and adventure while developing the skills they need to succeed, now and in the future.

All this is made possible by our dedicated team of adult volunteers that provide exciting scouting programmes in our 5 Sections at West Monkton. Working together in small teams, we make scouting happen and ensure that our programme is fun and exciting for the young people taking part.

Scouting is in very high demand at West Monkton, we receive requests on a regular basis for young people to join our adventure when our waiting lists are open. We are committed to providing a positive scouting experience to as many young people in our local community as we can.

Prioritisation

When places become available in any of our Sections, priority will be given to those who have been on the waiting list the longest and places are allocated in the following order of priority:

1. If a parent is or becomes a uniformed Leader/Executive member with key roles within one of the Sections in the Group. At the discretion of the Group Scout Leader, this may be applied
   in the case of a parent who commits to being a permanent helper. Our priority is to provide enthusiastic adult leadership in each section enabling us to run a balanced and exciting
   programme for our young people. We are always recruiting new leaders and therefore offer priority to children of leaders and committee members
2. Anyone else on the waiting list. Waiting list applicants will be offered a place, taking into account their time on the waiting list and the impact on the other sections. Young people who do not receive a place in the Section they have applied to will be transferred to the next section’s waiting list and placed into the waiting list according to the length of time they have already spent.

NB: Young people who move into the area who are already in the Scouting movement will be offered places wherever possible, regardless of the waiting list.

Please be warned that casual conversations with Leaders, or even seemingly formal agreements, regarding getting children on the Group waiting list are not relevant or valid. The only way to place your child on the waiting list is to make contact via the registration form.

Appeal
If a parent wishes to appeal this policy they are invited to make a representation and put forward their case to the Group Scout Leader where a final decision will be made.

Our capacity

The number of places we have available in our sections are limited by several factors, these are:

• maximum section sizes (set by The Scout Association)
  • Beavers    –    24
  • Cubs         –    36
  • Scouts      –    no limit (but local circumstances apply)

• Adult ratios (for activities away from the sections regular meeting place)
  • 1 adult to 6 Beaver Scouts plus the leader in charge
  • 1 adult to 8 Cub Scouts plus the leader in charge
  • 1 adult to 12 scouts

• The size of and facilities each section uses as their regular meeting place

Joining list capacities

Sometimes, there does come a point when we declare that our joining list is full. When this happens, we close our joining list and are not able to accept any further enquiries to join for the section (or sections), concerned. We have the need to close our lists because we get to a point where there is so many names on the sections list that the children at the bottom of the list will never have the opportunity to join the section before they reach the upper age limit of the section.

Why are we so oversubscribed?

Scouting provides young people with experiences to help build their confidence, provide a sense of purpose, explore life’s values and learn skills – these are hard to find anywhere else and we call them – skills for life!

Scouting is in very high demand at West Monkton and although we have 5 Sections, run by over 20 volunteers, it means we receive far more request to join than we can accommodate.

Scouting simply would not exist without the enthusiasm of our adults. All our leaders and supporters are volunteers who truly believe in the value and impact that scouting has on the lives of young people and run their sections at maximum capacity. We are always looking for opportunities to enable our existing sections to take the maximum number of young people or to start new section but in order to do this we need support of adults to get involved.