district commissioners report september · pdf file2014-8 then involvement in ‘the...
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September 2016
Send your articles to [email protected] by 20th of the month to be included in the next edition.We would especia lly love to hear from the young people about their Scouting adventures with photos as well.Derek Hagan Editor.
District Commissioners Report September 2016
www.southendestuarydistrictscouts.org.uk
Brian Dawbarn [email protected] District Commissioner: Brian Dawbarn CBE 55 High Mead, Rayleigh. SS6 7DT Tel: (01268) 770172
I hope all of you who went to camp or on an expedition or a sleepover had a great time and learnt a few new skills as well as enjoying yourselves.I hope also that everyone in a leadership role managed to have a brief rest from scouting and that you are now ready to provide a varied and exciting programme of scouting for our young people.
Outstanding DBS clearances – urgent action required. Please note that Scout Headquarters are planning to suspend anyone without an up to date DBS clearance automatically in the next few weeks so if your clearance is out of date please take steps to get yourself cleared as soon as possible. Please see guidance as to how to proceed (see attached). If you are having problems, please report them to me.
Training. If you need to commence or complete your training please watch out for announcements when training courses will be run in the District. Courses are being planned for the Autumn and dates and times will be announced in the near future.
Involvement in the Community. If you are looking for ideas how your Group or section could be involved in the community, which is one of the four elements of the Scout Association’s Strategy for 2014-8 then involvement in ‘The Really Big South Essex Sleep Out’, an event being organise by HARP, Southend’s Homeless Charity is one possibility. Details of how to get involved are shown later in this newsletter.
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District Swimming Gala 2016The date this year for our Gala is 26th November at Garon’s Pool as usual. Full details for each section will be circulated in due course by Ian, Mike or Mark.
Dick Vale
District Headquarters Bookings
The Really Big South Essex Sleep OutOne way in which scouts can help HARP in the community is ‘‘The Really Big South Essex Sleep Out’.
The idea is for families and community groups to host their own sleep out events, where they will camp out in a tent in the garden, or if they’re feeling really brave “sleep rough” in just a sleeping bag under the stars. Younger members of the family or group will get sponsored and all the proceeds will go to HARP to help homeless people in the area.
We are asking people to host their Sleep Out on or around Saturday October 8th, to coincide with World Homeless Day which is on October 10th. We have lots of schools signed up already. Some are choosing to host their own Sleep Out at the school with children from the school attending. Others are letting us promote the event to their children/families. Some are doing a mixture of both.
“Get sponsored, make a night of it, and raise money for local homeless people.“
Everyone who signs up for FREE gets a free fundraising pack, which includes guides for both parents and young people, activities for kids, sponsorship forms and a FREE wrist band. And when people register to take part, they can also select the group they are associated with. At the end of the campaign each group will get a certificate to show how much money was raised by all the Sleep Outs associated with their group.
It’s really easy to sign up at www.essexsleepout.org!
It would be great if your organisation could get involved in The Really Big South Essex Sleep Out in some capacity and we would be more than happy to give a talk to your members about the event. If you would like to hear more or arrange a talk then please come back to me on the phone number below or via email and I would be more than happy to help.
Lisa Walton, Community & Individual Fundraising Officer, Tel: 01702 415834
The District Headquarters is now back in the hands of Pat and Keith Rooks-Cowell.
If you need to book for any meetings,sleepovers,etc. please get in touch with us either on the telephone 01702 584026 or by email; [email protected]
Scouters in the District who wish to book social gatherings or childrens parties the price is £20.00 per hour. Its been that price since 2006.
Pat and Keithe
13 patrols of Scouts from 8 troops entered this year’s Camping Competition at Belchamps. The Scouts looked after themselves all weekend, from pitching their camp site on Friday evening, cooking their meals over open fires, to packing away on Sunday. Completing this weekend is a challenge and all the Scouts who took part can be proud of themselves.
The Scouts enjoyed some light relief during the Nore Supertroop competition on Saturday afternoon. Games included bungee running, an obstacle course and channelling water. An attempt to get all 64 Scouts sitting on each others’ knees in a circle ended in collapse and laughter. This year’s winners of Supertroop were the Parrot patrol from 5th Southchurch.
New for this year was a sedan chair rally on Sunday morning. The patrols constructed their chairs, which were marked for construction before and after racing. Everyone was kept busy throwing wet sponges over the race course and the racing was so much fun that at the end, two teams of Young Leaders and OASIS Active Support were inspired to join in.
Throughout the weekend, the leaders were pleased to see the Scouts working well in their patrols, and making new friends and socialising together in their free time.
At the end of the weekend, though, congratulations go to those who performed best throughout the weekend. The top three patrols all showed excellent camping and cooking skills, and were so close that it seemed a shame to split them. The results were
Scout Section Report September 2016
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Winners 1st Shoeburyness Black Raven
2nd 5th Southchurch (Thursday) Parrot
3rd 1st Prittlewell Falcon
At the end of the weekend we also presented the Dave Roberts trophy, recognising the best overall troop performance in our three competitive events: swimming gala, incident hike and camping competition. Congratulations to the winners this year, 1st Prittlewell.
Thanks go to all those who helped make the weekend a success, including leaders, young leaders, OASIS and Nore Explorer Scouts.
I hope all those troops holding summer camps had a great time, and look forward to hearing about their adventures at Thriftwood, Come To Tolmers and the Essex International Jamboree.
We have three events planned for the autumn term, and details of these will be available soon after we return in September
7-9 October
15&16 October
26 November
Indoor badge weekend at Belchamps
JOTA/JOTI at Belchamps
Swimming gala
Mike Bambrook
Essex International Jamboree 2016Essex Jamboree 2016 had 10,000 Scouts and Guides from the UK and other parts of the world, it is the largest in Europe, this was run by 2,000 Scout and Guide volunteers.I was on staff myself as were many from our District. There were some Explorer units and Scout troops including 1st Prittlewell, 2nd Prittlewell, 5th Prittlewell and 12th Southend there and 4th Thorpe Bay seemed to have just about every one else (their report starts on the next page), Dave Dryden had the job of driving and arranging the appointments of our Jamboree chiefs Paul & Karen , this was no small task, Paul Daniels was one of the other staff from Belchamps that took part another one of the amazing people that made this event great! well done guys.Derek Hagan
4th Thorpe Bay, together with 2nd Thorpe Bay and Patriot ESU (and Chester), along with a number of other groups in Southend Estuary, made the Essex Jamboree our summer destination this year.
Where it was different for us this time was that we had ticked a box on the form, indicating that we would be happy to host an international group. Obviously we wondered whether there would be a language barrier, or whether the young people would all get on during the event. However, the overriding thought for us was that the purpose of the jamboree was to meet other people in scouting, so it would be a great experience for our young people, if they were camping together with overseas visitors.
In due course we were informed that we would be hosting a scout group from Castleblayney, Ireland, who consisted of 7 scouts and 2 leaders. Castleblaney has a population of 3634, set in a pretty rural area, a little different from Southend with 177,031, so a different backdrop for scouting.
Although we had established a joint Facebook page for the main event, we only met late afternoon on the Saturday after they had travelled by train, ferry and train. The Irish scouts were more within the Explorer age range and there was no shyness between the Irish and UK scouts from the outset. The Castleblayney Leaders were great too, fitting right in with our team and turning their hands to whatever needed doing and it was interesting to hear about their scouting activities.
Our young people had a fantastic week and it was wonderful to see how well they all got on. However, reality seeps back in with all good things come to an end and there were genuine regrets on both sides. On the last morning after the goodbyes as friends were done, 5th Monaghan Castleblayney came to the alert and saluted us as fellow scouts before their long trek home.
I think that camping with another nationality on the same site just broke the ice a little for our scouts and helped them to maximise their jamboree experience. We are still in contact with Castleblayney and one of the future possibilities for us is having a camp there some time.
Trevor Francis
4th Thorpe Bay
Our new scouting friends…
5th Monaghan Castleblayney Scouts
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Our joint group, including leaders and Chester getting into the groove during “Back to the Knockout”
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Combination of USA, IRL and UK scouts.
Goodbye…as friends
Farewell…as Scouts
Oasis Active Support Report September 2016Several members of Oasis recently attended the annual Scouts Camping Competition to mark and award the Oasis Masterchef trophy. This year we changed the format and provided the food for the Saturday lunch which had to be cooked backwards. On the Saturday evening there was a wide variety of dishes and desserts served, the winning team cooking curry and making their own sauce with fresh cream. Sunday breakfast gave them the choice of cooking on fire or gas, if cooking on gas they would lose 10 points, some teams quickly worked out that if their fire wasn’t lit then it would be worth loosing the 10 points and picking them up on serving in the allotted time. During the Sunday morning we helped with timing the Sedan chair race and typical of us didn’t want to miss out on the fun so at the end of the event we raced the young leaders and won. Paul Stibbards awarded the Masterchef trophy to 1st Shoeburyness Black Raven patrol. Well done to all scouts who took part.
Our monthly meeting for July was held at Garons Golf Club where we attempted to do the Par 3 course. Paul did the first hole in 17 shots and suffice to say some of us didn’t get much better, we had to miss a couple of holes due to it getting dark. Sarah lost several balls in the pond much to everyone’s amusement. Adrian gave everyone 2 shots on each hole as a handicap. Well done to Mike Sutton on winning the triathlon event and now holding the trophy.
Sarah ClarkeSecretary Oasis Active Support
Local Training Administrators Report
RegardsValerie [email protected]
I have added 2 First Response courses to the Essex Scouts Training site
1) on Sunday 25th September 9 - 4.30
2) on Sunday 20th November 9 - 4.30
Also on Sunday 23rd October there will be a Getting Started course at DHQ 9 - 5
All training must be booked via Essex Scouts and bookings will close 1 week before the course or when
course is full (links to help are on the next page)
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There are a number of training courses available to help you get you wood badge and stay upto date, as well as validation nights to get your training recorded.
There is a requirement to book onto the training courses, this is to make sure enoughrecourses and enough of the District Training team can be there of you.
To make this easy to do we have made you the following links......
1. Register for training with Essex Scouts (need you membership number for this)2. Browse the courses (you can only book if you log in first)3. If you are returning to the webpage to log in you will need to start at the first box
That is all there is to it guys, good luck with your trading Jim the Local training manager is the last box above, this is encase if a problem.
You can find this info and more on the district website.. http://www.southendestuarydistrictscouts.org.uk/training/
DerekNews and Notes
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Training Courses and Validation
If your DBS clearance is out of date or the date is approaching for it to be out of date to continue volunteering with Scouting, a new DBS Disclosure check must be completed now as a matter of urgency.
What needs to be done?
You or a nominee will need to complete the ID check using the Atlantic Data system on the scout website. There are two ways for you to complete a DBS Disclosure check shown below. Please note the first process is the quickest and most straight forward to complete.
1. Meet with your Group Scout Leadersomewhere with online access to AtlanticDatawith three documents e.g. passport, driving license, birth certificate and /orutility bill.
2. Your GSL enters your ID information directly into Atlantic Data following whichyou then input your address history into Atlantic Data and submit the informationto the DBS.
Or
1. You complete a paper ID Checking Form obtainable from the scout website andpresent this form to the ID checker with three documents as above.
2. The ID checker will verify the details on the ID Checking Form andthen enter theinformation intoAtlantic Data when next on-line.
3. Once entered, the ID checker will arrange for Atlantic Data to send you an emailasking you to complete your information including address history, which whenyou have entered your address history into Atlantic Data should be submitted tothe DBS.
What will happen if a new check is not completed?
If a new DBS Disclosure application is not completed and submitted within the next 30 days, you will be suspended until a valid DBS Disclosure check is in place and the National Vetting Process is complete.
If you require further advice on the Disclosure process, please speak with your relevant Commissioner or local Appointment Secretary, who will be able to help.