South West Notts Scouts News

We very much regret that we will not be holding our Firewworks Extravaganza this year.

At the time we had to firm up bookings, the Government was restricting attendance numbers for large public events and requiring all attendees to demonstrate they had undertaken and received an ‘all clear’ lateral flow test within the previous 24 hours. Also we could not get special event insurance for the Fireworks evening.

These factors meant we had no option but to ‘pull the plug’ on our Fireworks evening – much to the disappointment of all concerned

COVID restrictions on public events permitting, we plan to be back in 2022 and we hope you will join us for a special ‘WE’RE BACK!’ FIREWORKS EXTRAVAGANZA

Please pass the word – and thank you for your understanding

As September comes round again and we’re getting ready to start up after the summer holidays, 1st Toton decided that the best way to launch into the new academic year was with a camp! From Low ropes to raft building to archery, they made use of all Walesby had to offer to have the best time imaginable

Today, we welcomed back ‘Little Anne’ and family for First Reponse leader training in SWNotts District. 

Thank you to Sarah, our trainer from First4FirstAid.org for an informative and interactive day. 

Well done to all those leaders who joined us for the training. 

If you are a leader in SWNotts and would like to come along to our next first aid training day, please contact Annette Daykin, Local Training Manager at annette.daykin@notts-scouts.org.uk

The UK Government’s recent relaxation of COVID restrictions in England and Wales means that that we can now return to offering a broader range of activities including indoor nights away experiences and outdoor camping for our Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and Explorer Scouts.

We will, however, still have some controls in place to ensure we offer, insofar as is possible, a COVID-safe environment for all our youth section members and our leadership teams. Examples of these are:

• Continued use of hand sanitizer at all activities.
• Ensuring all primary ‘touch’ surfaces are regularly disinfected.
• For close contact activities we will be encouraging the use of face masks.
• For overnight experiences (both indoor and outdoor) we are limiting the number of people who can sleep in a room or a tent. This might mean we will have to restrict numbers for some of these events.
• The use of PPE equipment if we have to administer First Aid to an adult or child.

As you can imagine, we are seeing a surge in the number of young people from age 6 until the age 18 who want to join their local Scout Group or Explorer Unit. Whilst this is good news, we need to keep a balanced ratio between the number of young people in each section and the numer of adult leaders in those sections. We are busy trying to recruit new adult volunteers. This will help us increase our youth membership. Without that recruitment we may have to put a young person on our wish to join/waiting list.

If you feel you might like to help as a leader with either Beavers, Cubs, Scouts or Explorer Scouts we would love to hear from you. Do please make direct contact with your local Scout Group or Explorer Scout Unit (details on the Group/Units section of this website) or send me an email via the Contacts page on our website.

As always, our priority is to ensure that all our young members (and our leaders) remain safe and well by providing a fully risk-assessed programme of activities each week.

As I write this, many local Groups are taking a short break from weekly meetings to coincide with the school summer holidays. They will, however, be re-starting weekly meetings in September.

We really appreciate the support we have received thus far from the parents and carers of our youth membership. We will do our best to continue to offer your children an active and challenging programme of activities in as safe an enviroment as possible in the weeks and months ahead.

Simon Clark (District Commissioner – SW Notts District

2 August 2021

Ed Hewes has served us as our District Youth Commissioner for nearly four years (which is one year longer than was originally agreed. He has done an amazing job in this role, but now feels itis time to pass on the baton to another enthusiastic younger leader. (District Youth Commissioners must be over 18 but under the age of 25 when appointed).

It is a very rewarding role which focuses on encouraging youth-shaped Scouting across the District. We are, after all, tasked to provide an exciting and challenging programme of activities which will both attract and then retain young people from the age of 6 onwards in the hope that Beavers will eventually progress through the sections and eventually become leaders! Beliieve me – it happens!

I will therefore be contacting all leaders aged 18 – 24 inviting them to ‘express an interest’ in the role of District Youth Commissioner. I look forward to being inundated with enquiries about this essential role within the District.