I have received a number of comments and emails following my recent posts.  Thanks to those of you who have emailed.  Can I encourage more of you to share your comments either by email to me directly or by posting them openly on this blog.  I received one email recently on the subject of "outstanding" Scouting and I thought it was so good I asked the sender if I could post it here to share with all of you.  Thank you, Pete Sessions from 17th St Michael's Scouts.  I give the rest of this post over to Pete's email and hope you find it as inspiring and helpful as I did.  I hope to hear lots more from all of you.

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Hi Dan,

Welcome and good luck in your new role as County Commissioner! I've been reading your blog with interest and a lot of your points ring true with what we've aimed to achieve at the 17th St Michael's Scouts. I started volunteering as a Scout Leader over 4 years ago - keen to put something back into an organisation that has given me so much. Over the last few years our leadership team has been working really hard to improve the quality of what we offer to local young people and increase the number who can benefit from what we do. There's still plenty more we can do but we've already had a great deal of success - most significantly the number of young people who we reach has more than trebled!

We can attribute our success to a whole range of factors but here are what I think are the top 5:

Building a strong programme

We find the programme to be the most important factor in improving the quality of Scouting. For this reason we focus a lot of time ensuring that our programme is balanced, fresh and exciting. One change that has helped us to improve the programme is to plan it well in advance. We now plan the years programme over the summer break when the leadership team agree 6 broad themes for the year - one for each half term. Themes have included guy Fawkes, survival, kites, jam making and film making. Then, nearer each term we build up a number of activities relating to the theme, which can be delivered over a series of weeks. Spanning activities over a series of weeks enables Scouts to build up more knowledge and skills and takes the pressure off leaders having to cram everything into a couple of hours.

Involve Scouts in running the group

We've increased the opportunities for young people to have a say in how Scouts is run. Scouts now regularly evaluate activities using a scoring process which helps shape future programmes. Scouts are given the opportunity to select activities and menus for camps. Scouts have also written a code of conduct which sets the boundaries for adults and young people. All of these things have led to improvements and have empowered young people to make decisions themselves and see the effect those decisions can have.

More flexible volunteering opportunities

We've found that in order to attract and keep volunteers, the roles we create need to be flexible. Nobody enjoys volunteering through a sense of duty alone when they'd really rather be elsewhere. As a Scout leader once told me - if adult volunteers aren't having fun then young people won't be either. On top of this, people lead busier lives and are generally not able to commit to turning up every week without fail. Recognising all of this, we have expanded our leadership team so that the responsibilities can be spread in a more manageable way. Leaders aren't expected to turn up every week and aren't made to feel guilty if they want a week off! Leaders simply commit to the activities that they can attend. Planning well ahead and having a longer term programme is very useful when working in this way.

Communicate better with parents

Parents seem to be more inclined to support Scouting if they are well informed and better understand what we do. To encourage better relationships with parents we held an open evening where Scouts showcased what they had been learning. We had a great turnout and parents are now less nervous about walking through the door and talking to us. This has really helped reduce the number of young people leaving Scouts prematurely as parents feel able to discuss issues with the leadership team rather than simply taking their child out of the organisation. Relying less on printed letters and more on email and text messaging has helped us to communicate more easily and effectively.

Built links with the local community

Like many groups, our centre is tucked away down a narrow lane and is not visible to the community. To increase local awareness of our group we have built links with the local community which have proved really useful. We've built a relationship with a local youth centre where we share facilities and qualified activity instructors. We also carried out an environmental project where we worked with the local B&Q and "friends of" group to make and install bird boxes at a local nature reserve. Our local police officer has visited the group and the Scouts then went to the police control centre in Portishead. All of these links have ongoing value and help ensure that the local people know we exist.

This year our group is celebrating it's centenary and we're looking back at 100 years of providing local young people with fantastic scouting. We're also looking forward to the next 100 years and building on what we've already achieved. I agree that these are exciting times for Scouting and a real opportunity to change gear and strive for great rather than just good!

Best wishes,

Pete Sessions

17th St Michael's Scouts