Looking to the future

Early years

As many of you will be aware our focus on early years is still very much a key feature for us in our Skills for Life strategy. That focus has been highlighted as we see Squirrel Drey’s celebrating their first birthdays across the movement.  

Areas we’re focused on in early years:  

• We’re continuing to offer any new Dreys opening in IMD 1-5 across the UK a £500 start-up grant.  
• We’re also continuing with dedicated support for Cohorts, with professional staff and volunteer Coaches to help get Squirrels started.  
• And we’re continuing to pilot the Partner-led and Family-led model of delivery in Squirrels.  
• We’ll make sure we partner with early years experts, to understand what’s working and what isn’t for local Scouting, and changing our approach as we go.  

14 – 24   

We’ll really be ramping up our work in looking at what we offer young people and young adults aged 14 – 24. Reviewing our existing provision, now 20 years old isn’t a minor task, but the good news is we’re moving into the discovery phase for this long-term piece of work.  We’re building a diverse range of volunteers and young people to take this work forward, as our 14-24 redesign team and a ‘Panel’ of young people who will identify best practice. 

We know that our programme for 14–24-year-olds must be informed by a wide range of lived experiences so we’re really keen for those from backgrounds who are under-represented in our national work to get involved – namely women, disabled young people and volunteers, and those from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. 

Inclusive Growth 

Our focus on growing Scouts inclusively is important. You’ll hear us talking about this more and more. We want more young people to gain skills for life, and to do that we want to grow our adult volunteer numbers and young leader numbers.  

We are specifically focused on growing Scouts in an inclusive way and will be looking at how we really encourage volunteer growth with people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, and also to grow our provision within areas of deprivation. We want all young people and adults, no matter their circumstances, to have the opportunity to join and benefit from Scouting so that even more young people can benefit from the life changing impact we can have.      

Race equity

Ethnic diversity in the Scouts doesn’t reflect the UK population for some members from Black, Asian and minority backgrounds. Negative experiences have led them to feel Scouts isn't a place for them. It’s time to change that. It’s time for every one of us, as Scouts, to live by our promise, law and values by becoming a place that’s inclusive of all races and ethnic backgrounds, so everyone can be themselves and thrive.  

As well as seeing the vision on here we have some practical actions we’d like to encourage you to look at. We’re also developing more support to help teams locally deepen their understanding of equity, collating and sharing stories, best practice and tools for volunteers to understand and act on local demographic data and ways to transparently show how Scouting is performing both locally and nationally.  

Volunteer Experience

We’ve talked a few times to you about the plans to fundamentally improve the volunteer experience over the next few years. We want to make sure our volunteers feel valued for everything they do and most of all, we want them to enjoy their experience at the Scouts. We know we need to recruit and retain more volunteers if we want to keep growing and provide more young people with skills for life. However, there needs to be more support in place to make sure there’s a great local welcome, with a smooth, integrated learning experience and good ongoing support.   

As a reminder the first phase of changes will include: 

• How we volunteer – looking at our volunteer roles and culture. 
• How we make sure we provide a warmer welcome for everyone who wants to volunteer with us.  
• A more engaging learning experience. 
• More support to help get everyday things done more efficiently and make them more enjoyable.  

This means we’ll see changes such as: 

• All volunteering roles will change – this may range from a title change, to some roles not existing and everything in between.  
• The way in which we welcome new volunteers into Scouts will change –changing the current appointment process. 
• We’ll move from training to learning so all learning will change – the structure and methods of how we do training – will change. 
• And all of this will be enabled by providing you with easy-to-use digital tools. This means we will move on from Compass and developing new solutions for managing adult membership. 

Where are we at?  

We’ve been working hard in the background preparing and planning. County/Area/Region teams have been busy with their volunteer Transformation Leads, understanding the changes that will be coming in 2023 and 2024 and planning how they’ll start and conduct conversations locally to share more information at the right time and right pace for your particular area. Some of you may have already heard about changes in your area, and if not yet, we know you will in the coming months.  

The Transformation Lead role is a permanent role that focus on leading the local implementation of change, not just a ‘one moment in time’ task – it will cover this volunteer experience change, as well as future changes around 14-24 programme and race equity as these develop, as well as other outputs from our work on Perception, Safe Scouting and Digital Transformation too. 

We’re also working closely with 10 Counties/Areas/Regions on the changes to the volunteer experience. This group of 10 is our Early Adopter Cohort. They’ll put in place new ways of working first, allowing us to learn and test as we go, before anything is rolled out for all members later in 2023.  

Our focus right now is working closely with our Early Adopters and Transformation Leads who are developing plans with their County/Area/Region teams and helping everyone in their local patch to understand broadly the changes that will be coming over the next 18 months and importantly why we’re making these changes. We’re also going to be moving at pace with some of the more cultural, softer changes that are less dependent on some of the new and exciting digital tools that are in development at the moment. And finally, we’ll continue preparing Compass data for transition to the new Membership System.  

We’re carefully considering how we roll out the changes, so you don’t feel overwhelmed.  

In 2023, please keep doing what you’re doing so brilliantly.  

• You may find yourself invited to local meetings by your Transformation Leads and County/District team to learn more about the changes and what they mean for you and your team.  
• You'll start to receive information locally about how the changes will be introduced and implemented in your local area.  
• Please engage with this information and attend discussions and meetings when invited to help your understanding of what the future looks like for your role in your local area and how we believe all of this change will set us up for a future where even more young people can develop skills for life. 
• There is no need for anyone to do anything until you hear from your local teams. You may see neighbouring Counties/Area/Regions planning and doing different things, but everyone will be progressing with this at a different pace and may be planning or phasing things differently. 

The next 18 months are going to be exciting as we introduce changes to the volunteer experience which will make your volunteering more enjoyable and more efficient. By doing this, we’re confident that together, we will achieve our vision and will see more young people and more adult volunteers, benefitting from all that Scouting offers. 

Thank you for everything you’re doing,