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Prepare, prevent and control

Find out how to make your nights away safe and enjoyable for everyone. How will you manage risk?

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You’ll need

  • Scrap paper
  • Pens or pencils
  • Football
  • Tennis ball
  • Tent (optional, for 'Weather the storm')

Before you begin

  • If you want this activity to count towards the Scouts Outdoor Challenge Award, you’ll need to do it during a night away.
  • This activity has three parts. ‘Introduce risk’ and ‘Play five stages’ together, then run the four bases alongside each other.
  • Remind yourself of the risk assessment guidance on Scouts’ website. The resources will give you the information and guidance you need to for ‘Introduce risk’ and ‘Play five stages’. You should already be familiar with the resources, as it’s essential that you risk assess before and during every activity.
  • Print off some copies of the Safety checklist for leaders. It’s a good way to give everyone the variety of risks, accidents, and incidents that have to be considered during regular meetings, trips, and nights away. Emphasise that it’s a list for adults, though – it’s not young people’s responsibility to start checking vehicle insurance!
  • Think about who you want to run the bases. You may want to invite someone from the Red Cross to run the ‘Campsite doctor’ base, for example. Some young people may also be able to run bases, for example, if anyone’s camped in extreme weather conditions, they could help the ‘Weather the storm’ base.

Introduce risk

  1. Everyone should split into pairs or small groups.
  2. Each group should choose an everyday incident that could occur at camp, for example, someone hurting their leg.
  3. Each group should turn their incident into a freeze frame.
  4. Once everyone’s ready, the groups should take it in turns to present their freeze frames and everyone else should guess what’s happened.
  5. The person leading the activity should explain that this is one way to come up with ideas of risks and hazards that people might need to watch out for.

Play five stages

  1. Everyone should stand in a circle, with a couple of metres between each person.
  2. Everyone should gently throw a football around the circle.
  3. Everyone should gently throw a tennis ball around the circle.
  4. Everyone should pretend the tennis ball’s become a bowling ball. They should continue to throw it around the circle, acting as though it were a bowling ball.
  5. Everyone should repeat step four, pretending the ball’s a hot potato, a ticking time bomb, and a live hedgehog.
  6. Everyone should come back together and think about how they responded.
  7. The person leading the activity should explain the five stages of Risk assessment made simple. Can people match their thoughts and actions to the stages?

For example:

  • People looked for hazards by watching out to see what was being thrown towards them.
  • People assessed who might be harmed (and how they might be harmed) by thinking about who was around them and how everyone might be affected by the object. This depended on what the object was.
  • People controlled risk by doing things like stepping away from their friends, so they didn’t elbow or step into them. They may also have changed how they threw and caught the ball when they were pretending it was something else.
  • People shared their findings by communicating with others – including sharing rules, expectations, and guidance before the game began and as it progressed.
  • People reviewed and revised their plans every time the object being thrown or the conditions around them changed.

Move around bases

  1. Everyone should split into four groups.
  2. Each group should start at a different base. They should spend some time getting stuck into the activities to learn the skills they need.
  3. The person leading the activity should let everyone know when it’s time to move on.
  4. Everyone should keep spending time at bases and moving on when the person leading the activity gives the signal, until they’ve been to all four bases.

This base is all about how campsite gadgets can limit risk by helping everyone to maintain campsite and personal hygiene when they’re away.

  • If you’ve had a go at the Camp kitchen pitchin’ activity, use this base to start building the gadgets everyone came up with.
  • If you haven’t tried Camp kitchen pitchin’, deliver a shorter version of the activity. For example, just ‘Gather ideas’ and ‘Plan your pitch’ – don’t worry about ‘Time to present’.
  • The person leading this base should be a qualified first aider. Someone within your group could step up and share their skills, or you could welcome a visitor from an organisation such as the Red Cross or St John Ambulance.
  • This base should give everyone the skills they need to prevent and treat common injuries and illnesses that might happen at camp. It’s a good idea to cover sunburn, dehydration, nausea, insect bites, cuts, and burns.
  • It’s also important that the base emphasises the role of personal hygiene in staying healthy and preventing illnesses.
  • If you can, ask the group if there’s anything they’d like to learn about or if they’d like to develop any specific skills, and pass their requests on to whoever’s leading the base.

This base is all about preparing for adverse weather conditions at camp. If you need more inspiration about things to consider when pitching tents, check out the Houses on poles activity.

  1. Everyone should work together to create a mind map of worse case scenarios for weather at camp. They could draw from real life experiences, stories they’ve heard, or just situations they think would be difficult to manage.
  2. The person leading the base should explain how to pitch and ‘storm set’ a tent so it’s ready to stand up to the fiercest weather. The best way to protect a tent from strong winds and rain is to set it up right, position it correctly, and run extra storm lines from the pole and fly. How you do this will depend on the design of your tent. Generally, though:
    • Position the tent away from the prevailing wind.
    • Storm lash the tent. Extend the main guys diagonally backwards and cross them over each other (but don’t let them rub together). Peg the flysheet out with a separate set of pegs (in the same manner as the tent itself) about 15cm about the tent so they don’t touch. Lay the groundsheet inside and tuck the sod cloth under it.
    • Loosen non-synthetic (natural fibre) guy lines at night or when it rains – the fibre will expand with the water and make them tighter. The first task in the morning (or when the rain passes) should be to readjust them again. Nylon guy lines don’t need to be adjusted like this because they don’t shrink.
  • Taking care of people’s emotional wellbeing and looking after each other is another important skill for everyone to consider on nights away. Sometimes the things that affect people don’t have a physical impact, for example, conflict between friends or homesickness.
  • This base should be a safe space to calmly discuss how people can take care of their mental health and wellbeing at camp. If you can, ask the group what affects their wellbeing on camp – everyone should work together to come up with some ideas that may help when things get tricky.
  • You could explore activities like the Five ways to wellbeing chatterbox or Wellbeing wheels – why not add some camp-specific suggestions, or make them for different situations such as homesickness or arguments between friends? You could also think about how to create safe spaces at camp, for example, you could create an autism-friendly space that anyone could use to take a break if they feel overwhelmed.
  • There’s more guidance on mental health here. You could also check out the information from Mind.

Reflection

This activity was all about living healthily. Risk is a part of everyone’s daily lives. Does anyone think it would be possible to have a totally risk-free night away? How does identifying and evaluating potential hazards help everyone to take care of their body and mind? Was anyone surprised by any of the bases? What should people think about when they’re deciding how much risk to expose themselves to?

This activity was also about problem-solving. Assessing risk isn’t about finding things people can’t do – it’s about finding what people can do and finding ways to make things safe. What problem-solving skills do people use when assessing risk? People might think about understanding the challenge (or risk) before thinking about solutions or considering different options before choosing the right solution.  

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

  • It’s up to you how much detail you go into, depending on how much your group know.
  • If people are already clued up on the basics, why not try some more formal risk assessment writing? This might help people be more detailed in their analysis.

Be aware that some people may find it tricky to talk about some of these topics, especially wellbeing at camp. You may want to set some clear boundaries and expectations, such as only talking about your own experiences and not using other people as examples. No one should feel pressured to share their experiences if they don’t want to. Wellbeing is something that affects everyone, so it’s OK to focus on wellbeing activities that will help boost everyone’s mood.

All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.

Scouts Outdoor Challenge Award

Proper training and preparation reduce risk. Learning about axe, saw, and knife safety is important if you’ll be using any of these tools. It works best as a separate activity, as it’ll likely require more adults for a higher ratio of adults to young people. Check out ‘Toolkit training’ for one way to do this. You can find more information on safe camping and outdoor skills here.  

It’s best to let young people shape this session. Get them involved in the planning – what important skills would they like to cover, and who do they think would be the best person to share their expertise? Don’t forget that some of the young people may have experiences and knowledge to share too.