Adult Volunteers
6th Holme Valley Scouts is a volunteer-run organisation, and we rely on people like you to give their time and help give our young people the best opportunity we can give them to develop skills for life. It takes all sorts of people to make a Scout group work, and not all of them work directly with our young people. If you’re interested in lending your time or skills please get in touch.
> Quick View: Training check list for section assistants
Parent Helpers
If you’re a parent of one of our young people and would like to stay for a session to help out, please do! An extra pair of hands is always welcome.
As a parent helper, there are some limitations on how you can help – most important of which is us needing to supervise you. We’re committed to keeping our young people safe, so part of the Scouting policies means we can’t leave you alone with any of our young people. You’ll still be able to lead a group in an activity, but one of our section leaders or assistants would have to stay in the room with you.
If you enjoy coming along and helping out, please do consider joining Scouts too – it gives us more flexibility on how you’re able to help.
Joining Scouts
We understand that being asked to join our movement sounds like a lot of responsibility – but it’s not that scary, and the process doesn’t take too long. If you’re already helping out regularly as a parent helper then you’re already doing the hard bit – we just need you to do the boring bit (once) and then we can give you a necker to wear too. Joining Scouts is also making more of a commitment to our Scout group and our young people, showing we can rely on you to be there for our meetings to help our young people develop skills for life.
However, we understand that not everyone can make it every week – work schedules, personal lives, or just getting sick can mean we won’t see you every week, which is OK – if you’re thinking about joining us but are unsure of what time commitment you can make then just speak to one of our section leaders, or our group Scout leader and we’ll find something that works for you.
Scouting HQ requires some basic training for all volunteers to keep our young people safe, which are available on the Scouts website (for free, no sign-up required). Everyone is required to do 4 training modules – essential information, safety, safeguarding, and GDPR. They take around an hour each. Make sure you download and save your certificates at the end of each training module – we’ll need to see these to know you’ve done the training.
There may be one or two additional training modules needed depending on what role you’d like to take within the group, but our Group Scout Leader will talk you through whats needed for your role.
The next step would be to get a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, but please note that we need to do this for you. You’ll need to provide a few forms of ID to our Group Scout Leader who can then start this process for you. There’s not much to it from your side, and it usually only takes a few days to come through.
Going through the training and DBS checks seems like you’re taking the first steps to making a big commitment in helping our Scout group thrive, but we require these checks because we’re committed to keeping our young people safe.
Becoming a section assistant
> Quick View: Training Check List
If you think you’re ready to take on the role of a section assistant, speak to the section leader at one of our meetings, or get in touch with us and we can discuss the role with you. Once you’ve completed the required training and a DBS check, you’ll be invited to be invested into our movement – just like we do with our young people.
My young person is currently in the section I want to volunteer with, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue volunteering when they move on.
That’s OK – many volunteers want to volunteer in the same section as their young person, and when they move on, you’ll want to move on with them (or perhaps stop volunteering with us altogether). We’d rather have you for the time your young person is with us than not have you at all.
I can’t commit to being there every week
That’s ok – any time you can spare to help out makes it easier for the whole section to give our young people the best experience we can at our meetings. If you can only make it every other week that’s still time we appreciate you volunteering with us. The more volunteers we have, the more we can spread the load and let people enjoy a night off too. Why not speak to a friend about volunteering with you, and take it in turns to come to meetings?
I’m free during the meetings, but I can’t commit any time outside of the meetings
Our section leaders (and assistant leaders) do a fantastic job of organising everything so as a section assistant, there’s no expectation on you to be doing anything outside of our meetings if you don’t have the time to give.
Behind the scenes volunteers
Not every volunteer in our Scout group works directly with young people. We have to keep our records up to date, take care of our building and equipment, run the cafe at the Christmas market, and food catering for everyone on our camps. We also operate as a charity which has its own set of legal requirements and paperwork. If you think you can help up out in any way, please contact us and we can talk about how you can contribute to 6th Holme Valley Scouts.
