District Leaders meeting – Thursday 9th April 2010 – Via Conference Call.
Groups Represented: Anlaby, Hessle, Ferriby & Swanland, Elloughton-cum-Brough, South Cave, Gilberdyke, Howden, Snaith, Goole and Hook
Groups with No Representation: Cottingham, Kirk Ella and Willerby
1. Message from Headquarters / Tim Kidd
A suggested letter to send out to parents about subs will arrive this week and its basically talking about the fact that at the present time all charities are struggling financially but The Scout Association has lobbied the government, very hard, for help. The Government have now announced they will help charities, this money though will not come to The Scout Association as we are not classed as a priority. With this in mind we have to realise that as an association we have overall costs such as insurance, safeguarding and safety which will be on-going during these times. Some staff at HQ have been made redundant and many have been furloughed.
2. Blacktoft Beacon District
Just as HQ have overall costs to be met so do we at County, District and at Group level. Blacktoft Beacon District Executive have come to the following decision to support our 13 groups, having looked at 2 key issues.
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- The finances of the District
- Can we help groups
As a District we have looked at our ongoing costs and we do have some expenditure still that will need to be paid out of the accounts, but so we can help groups in the district it was decided that in Jan / Feb next year the district will not charge groups any District Levy on their capitation fees, (currently £3.75 per young person). The District will pay this for all groups, as a one off and in 2022 we will reinstate the District levy part of the capitation fee and also there may be the usual increase.
We know that some groups are in a healthy position and some groups are not so healthy and we have looked at what reserves we have in the District. What we would like you to do is look at your finances, see what you are committed to paying out, what you can cut back on, if anything, and see if you have sufficient money to see this through. If you don’t please contact the District sooner rather than later and we can see how we can help.
The next thing we are doing as a District is to close our campsite, Tablers Wood. we do still have overheads to pay at the site so we have ring fenced some money for Tablers in case they need this money with the intention of when we reopen the camp site we want it to reopen in the same financial position as it is at the moment.
The final thing is support for ‘The Great Indoors’ initiative. This is free to all and you do not have to be a member of the association, it is open to anyone to use! This obviously comes at a cost to Headquarters and they are asking for donations. As a District we have decided to provide them with £250 towards this as a donation, this would be money that we would have used for district activities such as St Georges day, camp craft etc. had normal Scouting been operational.
Blacktoft Beacon exec ask Groups, over the coming weeks, to look at their overheads in the same way the District has. Groups will need to contact parents to let them know about sub etc over the next term and the rest of the year. Linda (DC) John (District treasurer) and Scott (District chair) are willing to help and advice if you need help!
Peter Colley from Gilberdyke mentioned that East Riding Of Yorkshire Council are offering grants to any Charity that have business rates to pay, if you have a property and pay rates you should receive a letter but if not the website address to look into this is:
https://east-riding-self.achieveservice.com/service/Small_Business_Grant
Question from Philip @ Howden – Are county reducing their part of the capitation? (The CC has responded, confirming that the County fees will be confirmed at their May exec meeting but it is very unlikely to be reduced.)
3. DBS Renewals
At the present time we cannot process any DBS checks, whether new or renewals. We must not put any through or chase anyone for renewals. The DBS are currently concentrating on getting the DBS’s through for the volunteers and NHS responders and we are not classed as a priority as we are not meeting. Joy will keep a full record of any DBS checks that expire and no one will be suspended for this. When we are back meeting face-to-face all the ones which have expired will have 90 days to get these processed. We will contact each group to let them know who’s needs renewing.
4. Programme from HQ
Hopefully everyone has looked at the activities on The Great Indoors, however please don’t feel you have to put a lot of pressure on parents to do these at home, it is nice to see some kind of Scouting still happening. All the activities on there can be done at home with parents and families, some can be done through virtual scout meetings too. Along with this HQ have released the Three for 3 campaign which might be nice to share with your young people. They are also encouraging parents to share their things online to share with others.
In Humberside, the summer challenges for Challenge X are on the county website. One of them is about renewing your promise, this would be nice to see people doing seen as we cannot meet at St George’s Day.
5. Staying Safe Online
A reminder that the yellow card should be adhered to at all times even now, just remember that phone calls/video calls/messages should not be made 1-2-1 with young people. There is a lot of advice on the monthly email that is sent out about how to talk and behave when talking to young people or video calling, don’t forget some platforms have age restrictions too, just check the age restriction.
https://www.scouts.org.uk/volunteers/scouts-at-home/staying-safe-online/
If you have any concerns please feel free to speak to scout association if you have any safeguarding issues they are still open.
6. Training
If you have any outstanding ongoing learning you should have received an email from HQ asking you to do this online, please ensure that you do this so that your training is up to date. It does not matter if you did the last training online too, you can still complete this online a second time, the deadline for this training is 31st May. We appreciate that a lot of people may be a lot busier that they were previously, so we are aware but please let us know if this deadline is not possible, please let Linda and Rachel know.
First Aid – The Health and Safety Exec are advising that there is a 3 month extension on their certificate, we have not had confirmation from HQ but this is the advice from the Health And Safety Executive. We are currently not face2face meeting so it can be completed once we are back.
7. Any other Business
You have received an email from Rachael regarding the newsletter making sure you are registered for the GSL newsletter, please send an email to Rachel to register if you do not currently receive this.
Can you please check that your email address on Compass is also up to date as the data that is been issue by HQ is been issued to the email address registered on compass.
Meeting closed at 7.40 we will be back in touch next week with new things coming through, if you have any questions please email Linda.
