Dear parents and carers
A short one from me this week, promise.
Everything continues to head in the right direction and once again, thank you everyone for your understanding. Please keep on booking for sessions (we really can’t accept anyone that hasn’t pre-booked for everyone’s safety) via OSM and following the safety procedures detailed on the invite email.
I spoke last week of the large waiting list we currently have. To help prepare for getting new members involved, we need to know exactly what our membership currently looks like. I note there are a few members who haven’t responded to any invites for meetings, haven’t got in touch with us and haven’t been paying subs. At the end of October, if we don’t hear from any members who meet this criteria (responded to no meeting invites – yes or no, not got in touch and hasn’t been paying subs) I will close their membership and offer their place to someone from the waiting list.
There may be members who don’t yet want to return to Scouting. That is absolutely fine, please just let us know and we will accommodate you with no issues at all – all we ask is that we are told! For those not attending face to face meetings, I am offering a weekly challenge via the website, based on the popular Task Master TV show (thank you South London Scouts!). Anyone and everyone is welcome to take part, but it is there as an additional programme activity for those not attending meetings. These are posted on the website at the same time as this newsletter. As you’ll appreciate, the leaders are focused on weekly face to face meetings and the time it’s taking for each meeting in planning and preparation is significantly more than our old ‘normal’ so providing additional meetings via Zoom, etc., is not practical at this time. Equally, where weather (more the associated safety risks) affects a programme, we won’t necessarily switch to an alternative (as happened with Scouts last week) as the planning and preparation is a lot for our volunteers on top of what they’ve already done for the face to face meeting.
Another little issue we’ve noticed (or caused!) – please ignore the ‘programme’ section of Parent Portal and only take notice of the ‘events’ section. The programme area has the details of each week in some sections to support the leaders with their planning, but I appreciate it is showing up and causing some confusion as it looks like your young person is due every week even if they’re not. The events section is what allows us to invite the right people each week.
Final request – please contact the leaders using their email address (firstname@11th.org.uk) or one of the other ways detailed on our website, not via private message on Facebook to their personal account. You can also reply to any of the OSM emails sent to you and it will get to the right person.
There you go…. promised a quick update! Have a great week and hope to see you over the course of the week.
Best wishes
Craig
Group Scout Leader