County Commissioner’s Welcome

Paul Bell

Having now been County Commissioner for six months I thought it was about time that myself and the team reached out to you to confirm the changes that have happened around the County and for the team to let you know what projects they are working on.

Before I go any further, I would like to thank you, the Managers, the Leaders, the Trustees and the young people for everything that has been going on to provide Scout experiences for the young people in and around Hampshire. Without all of you doing what you do, week in, week out, our young people would not have the immense fun that they do. Thankfully the major issues with Covid are behind us, we are now at the stage where we have learnt to live with it, and thankfully we have all realised that Scouting can carry on around it. I do please ask everyone to be sensible about things and if you do catch it, please take the week off to recuperate.

The main thing that I announced when I came into this role is that I wanted to do away with the four Clusters that Hampshire was divided into and to instead split the county East and West. My intention is that each side of the county will have it’s own Programme Team, still providing centralised county section events, however with the new teams being closer to the Sections on the coalface, the intention is the information reaches those that need it in a more efficient way. Six months in, this seems to be working well, although I do have some gaps in the County Scout team that I am determined to fill as soon as I am able to.

For those of you that were at the Annual General meeting in July, you would have shared a wonderful activity day with us in Ferny Crofts and seen me appoint Sarah Thomas as our County Chair. Sarah joins us with a lot of experience, and I really do look forward to working with her over the coming years as we implement our joint plans.

Most of you will realise that I have appointed Paul Hedges as my Deputy County Commissioner, Paul brings to the post a lot of experience working in the north of county in various roles, the most recent being as ACC District Support for the north Cluster. Paul will be working closely with me around the county, so please do not be surprised when you ask for me you will sometimes get Paul, or even better you will get us both. Paul also has the role of approving new badge design requests, so please do send them to him for approval.

I am in my second rejig of the team since taking over, most recently to align ourselves as best as we can with the suggestions from Scout Headquarters that will be coming in over the next year.

The team looks as follows:

Keith Hawkins is Deputy County Commissioner Volunteering Development, Keith’s team has the responsibility for rolling out the Squirrels section around the county and the target is still to have a Squirrels Section in each Group by the end of 2023. If that is not your intention, we really need to talk. Squirrels are a new section in the Scout Association for children between the ages of 4 and 6, and it has been proven that Squirrels bring their own leaders that then feed into the other Sections of the Group as children progress through the Group. Also, please do not forget that each new Squirrels Section that is opened, qualifies for the County Development Start Up Grant.
Keith has the Growth and Development Officers reporting to him, he also has Sheridan O’Shea as our ACC Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, he now has our County Appointments Advisory Committee under him, and the Learning Experience Team, led by Claire Hawkins.

Martin Rudd, remains Deputy County Commissioner Community Support, Martin heads up the County Awards Advisory Group, the Future Leader Programme, Scouts in Hospitals, Community Liaison and the County Amalgamation and Implementation Team who manage the District mergers in the county. As an update I can confirm that we have extended the deadline for merging Chandler’s Ford and Eastleigh Districts into Arrow District, and that merger will now be finalised on 31st January, 2023. I have currently halted the merger of Havant, Petersfield and Waterloovile, while I speak with each of the District Commissioners concerned and discuss all of the options to ensure we are going to achieve what it is that we want for the benefit of the young people in the Districts concerned, once I have done that we will release another plan.

Paul Hedges is Deputy Commissioner for Hampshire East, and Sarah Anderson is Deputy County Commissioner for Hampshire West. These two people have the role of being the go to people for the Districts in their side of the County, they are responsible for appointing District Commissioners, for ensuring that the Programme Team on their side of the county delivers quality experiences to the young people. They have an important role of being the conduit for information to pass between the District and County level.

I have appointed Peter Knott as Deputy County Commissioner Programme, Peter takes on the enormous and vital portfolios of: Managing the county Programme team with Andy Chatwin as ACC Programme, Andy is responsible for ensuring the we run Section events that somehow can cater for all of our Sections in the County. That could mean running events multiple times around the county, but there is no point having events that cater for a small percentage of our members when we are the largest county in the country and we should be shouting that. My vision is to have one or two massive events for each Section in the county each year, that could potentially cater for every member of that Section to attend.
Also under Peter is Zara Seymour our County Youth Commissioner and Tom Hughes our Deputy County Commissioner. Peter will also support Zara and Tom in organising the County Youth Councils and also planning and launching the idea of young people in high places, where young people shadow the people in more senior roles in order to gain experience and knowledge. Peter also has the Scout Active Support Units and the Scout Permits under him, his challenge there is to ensure that every Section knows exactly what skills we have available to them around the county and how to access them.

Paul also heads up the County Support Team, this includes our Media, Communications and Digital Teams, which are all being merged into one, the County Safeguarding Lead – Julie Mair, the County Safety Lead – to be appointed, Ferny Crofts, under the management of Kerie Wallace, County Operations and County Office, under the management of James Redfearn the County Operations Manager, and finally the County Complaints Team under the management of Sheridan O’Shea.

I hope that over the coming months I will get to meet you all at various events. In the following pages of this update we have some amazing news for you about HamJam25, the forthcoming changes in the Scout Association, things that we are doing to bolster our work to support you in growing our numbers.

Change is a constant thing, for us to continue to be a movement that is relevant for young people in our world, we need to be able to constantly adapt to our ever-changing times. If things like Squirrels are not in your future plans, you need to be asking yourself why not, they are our future, and we need to embrace them. Lack of leadership, having to many roles etc, are all things that can be resolved if we just get off the treadmill and consider some new options. Please be open to change with me and hopefully together we will achieve the magical 30,000 Census figure where the young people want me to abseil from the Spinnaker Tower or something equally as scary.

Yours in Scouting

Youth Council Update

Zara Seymour
County Youth Commissioner

Youth Council will return in September with a fun filled weekend at Ferny Crofts, where we introduce our new youth representatives and pass along future opportunities, with visits from organisations such as the Hampshire Youth Commission.
The next Youth Council will be springtime 2023.

Thoughts from the new Chair

Sarah Thomas
County Chair

Since becoming County Chair on the 3rd July (that's some birthday present from the County Commissioner, thanks Paul) I have been finding my way around the role, from a brilliant induction by Peter Moody, visiting Fernycrofts and meeting members of Team Hampshire! Governance is at the forefront of this role and there are challenges for Groups and Districts across the County however key to all of this is ensuring our young people and volunteers are supported and have opportunities for development, particularly now we are emerging from the COVID restrictions. There are exciting plans for development around the County and I'm looking forward to collaborating with our volunteers on these projects.

Programme, Activities, SASUs

Peter Knott
Deputy County Commissioner Programme

It has been six months since I was asked to take on this role and it has been an interesting start. After focussing most of my time on the Explorer section for the past few years, coming into this role has given me the opportunity to see a lot more of the fantastic activities that other sections of Hampshire Scouts are getting up to. From Squirrels to Scout Network there are some amazing things happening around the County.

I have spent time meeting the various County Scout Active Support Units and seeing what they get up to. I have also met a couple of brilliant District SASU’s who are doing a lot around the County too, Vikings Activity Team from Denewulf District and Old Scout Bushcraft from Fareham West.

After we advertised our [email protected] email address, our Manager of activity permit schemes has been busy supporting lots of adult volunteers who have either had activity permits elapse or wanted to find out more information about activity permits.

There is a brand-new leadership team at Hampshire Scout Expeditions (HSX) and some very exciting things are coming.

The Pro-badge team have put a lot of time and energy into upgrading their facilities at Lyons Copse ready to start some more courses in the new term and into next year.

The Solent regatta is due to take place over the weekend 24th/25th September. This year they are having a two-day event with Saturday at Testwood lakes and Sunday 4th Hythe Sea Scout HQ.

We have a new Youth team with Zara Seymour as your County Youth Commissioner and her Deputy CYC, Tom Hughes. Zara and Tom are holding their first Youth Council weekend at Ferny Crofts 9th-11th September with DYC’s and Explorer Scouts from across the County invited.

A lot of us are still finding our way after two years of unmuting ourselves on Zoom and I know some of us are feeling rusty. If you feel that you don’t have the skills to run an activity within your section Leadership team then please ask for help. If your Squirrels, Beavers, Cubs, Scouts or Explorers want to do something that you can’t offer, then get in touch as there is help within the County for you. Finally, we want to look at bigger County events but we are a youth led County and so we need to know what our Young People want to do?

Community Support

Martin Rudd
Deputy County Commissioner Community Support

Hampshire Young People’s Emergency Response (HYPER) – Finally the formal launch of this ‘first in the Country’ initiative and the 2022 Exercise was held in April at Ferny Crofts. Forty young people in four teams attended from the Police/Fire Cadet, Explorer Scouts including one mixed team from all three. The Steering Group are working to have a network in each local authority area so implementation during times of needs is quick and effective. Adan Jollans and I would like to thank all leaders who have supported this initiative so far.

Awards:
• Good Service Awards – This year’s nominations are slow for the higher awards that need to be agreed via the County Awards Advisory Group or submitted to Gilwell for approval. To date we have agreed only 9 GSA’s at County level and recommended only 2 to Gilwell for acceptance. There is still plenty of time for more this year.

• We do not know how many DC’s have agreed for Chief Scouts Commendation for Good Service or Award for Merit as there is no requirement to send via County Office.

• Commander Bruce Award – we are looking to revise the parameters of this exceptionally generous award and will be meeting with Alastair Bruce (one of our Hampshire Ambassadors) and our CYC and team during September/October to start developing the new approach ready to launch the Award in the Spring and the presentation of the Award at the County Annual Review/AGM in 2023.

County Amalgamation Implementation Team (CAIT) – The County have now completed the original ‘Bounce Back’ objectives set in 2021 and some six Districts have been merged into three (with new names) and another has been amalgamated into two larger Districts. So at this point Hampshire has 23 Districts providing great Scouting for our young people, although we are looking to potentially merge Districts in two other areas.

Hampshire Scouts in Hospitals (HSiH) – Now Covid seems to be retreating, we are looking forward to going back into the hospitals from September onwards. The Team led by John Stevens is still doing great things via video when they can and have developed ‘activity’ videos for craft sessions by the bedside.

Future Leaders Project (FLP) – We will soon appoint a ‘Lead’ and the team will start this important project during the Autumn this year.

Hampshire Memorial Service – This year on Sunday 11th September 2022 at Cricket Camp. Many thanks to our County Chaplain Su Brakewell for organising.

Transformation

Sam Poole
Transformation Lead

Soon, we will have a Transformation page on our members' website. On that, we will publish any Hampshire-specific information about some changes being implemented by the Scouts over the coming years.

We will not be duplicating content from HQ but will direct people to essential areas / useful items through this page... event announcements, such as HantsCamp23 etc.

I'd also like this page to be an area where we can publish stories about how transformation is already happening in Hampshire, such as within Portsmouth and Southampton, to give our members a local flavour of what's happening close to home.

Engaged with all DCs, District Chairs, and Youth Commissioners

This will echo what has already been spoken and shared, before the summer break, and reiterate our 'north star' message / the WHY behind this transformation / the fact we're still in the understanding phase. This email will also promote the above web page I plan to work on in the next two weeks. I'll also promote the team with a lovely pic of us all! 🙂When we are ready, we will have information available to all members, but we are waiting on HQ to provide us with further information.

County Operations

James Redfern
County Operations Manager

Over the last six months the main project in this area has involved making significant progress in expanding the staff support Hampshire Scouts now offers to our volunteers across the County. In May we welcomed three new team members to the Growth and Development Team, expanding this to five people. This means we are now able to offer a great deal more support to Groups and Districts in terms of volunteer recruitment and support for opening new Sections (eg Squirrels!). We have also expanded the County Office, welcoming another member of the Admin Team to provide more support to the County Team and others across the County, which will include taking a lead on organising the logistics for County events such as the County Conference and AGM.

Our County Activity Centre, Ferny Crofts, has recovered amazingly well from the impacts of the Coronavirus Pandemic, with our busiest summer yet as we welcomed back Schools, Scouts and others from across the Country (and Europe!) for their spring and summer camps. We will be running the first EVER County Squirrels Camp nationally on site, and for the first time hosted the County AGM at Ferny Crofts, allowing young people a chance to participate in a range of activities whilst also being involved in the Annual Review event.

In the background we are working on improving our processes regarding GDPR and data protection, and in the future plan to provide additional guidance and support to Groups and District in this complex area. We are also working with the Communications Team to make improvements to the way we share news and other communications around the County – watch this space!

County Training Team Update

Claire Hawkins
County Training Manager

From a training point of view, not a lot happens over the summer months as everyone is doing sleepovers and camps!

We held a module 38 - Residential Experiences course in May that was very well attended. Wood badge awards have been trickling through throughout the summer and this term we have three Wood badge module weekends, a Managers and Supporters weekend and another Residential Experiences weekend planned along with the LTM conference and Trainers conference and zoom modules, so we are back with a bang!

Moving forward we will be picking up on compliance over the next few weeks and months.

Inclusion

Sheridan O’Shea,
Assistant County Commissioner Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

• Working closely with the G&D team to develop a Hampshire strategy for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

• Participated in the WSJ leader selection weekend which proved useful and particularly enlightening in terms of the expectations that young people have around EDI

• As a consequence, am now in the process of developing an Inclusion assessment tool for use within Groups to aid leaders with working in an inclusive way

• Planning for a number of workshop sessions around neuro-diversity to support leaders working with young people in their sections as this is the area that we receive most requests for help with on a day to day basis

• Working with communications team to develop access to a EDI resource base on our website for all leaders

• Supporting a number of individual leaders as well as Groups with particularly challenging EDI situations

Growth & Development

Keith Hawkins
Deputy County Commissioner, Volunteering Development

Growth & Development has seen some big changes this year with a bigger team and the ability to deliver more to local Groups and Districts.

Kelly Taylor has joined as the Growth and Development Co-ordinator, managing the team and leading the team on our strategic aims of providing additional capacity, reducing want to join lists and helping to fill Group Scout Leader positions.She has been joined by Debbie Norton and Sophie Edwards who are new Growth and Development Officers.

Squirrel Scouts is continuing to grow at a rapid rate – with numbers across the County increasing every month. As the first anniversary of Squirrel Scouts approached the County is preparing for a fun day for the section at Ferny Crofts with around 200 Squirrels expected to attend.

If you are interested in starting a Squirrel Drey then you will need to complete the expression of interest form and the County will be able to provide support, knowledge and a wealth of experience to help you on your way.

Hampshire Scouts again support CarFest the huge charity event held in the heart of Hampshire with around 100 adult volunteers promoting Scouting, running activities and applying wrist bands to visitors on arrival. Hampshire Scouts is the public face of CarFest to those arriving, it is a weekend that offers the opportunity to volunteer in a slightly different way that is both fun and rewarding.

Major activities have been taken place with the County Beaver Camp held at Ferny Croft with around 350 young people attending for a weekend of activities and friendship.

The much-postponed Swiss Adventure finally took place having been delay by Covid for two years. Three coach loads of Explorers and Scout Network travelled to the Kandersteg International Scout Centre for a fully You Shaped two weeks of exciting activities in the mountains, on the water and in the air. Each young person their own individual activity plan, a mammoth task for the organising team but one the offer exactly the fun and excitement that is young person was looking for.

County Finance Update

John Natt, County Treasurer

A review of the County six months accounts to 30 June 2022 indicates that in overall terms income is broadly on budget. Expenditure is in overall terms considerably less than budget with the result that the six months results reveal a surplus of income over expenditure of just over £52,000.

The major reductions in expenditure are as a result of staff costs being less than anticipated (due in no small part to problems in recruiting) and expenditure of premises repairs and renewals at Ferny Crofts being less budget. It is expected that in overall terms expenditure will move back towards budget in the second six months of the year and it is hoped that income levels for the second six months will reach or budget.

A full review if the year to 31 December 2022 will follow in due course.

Hampshire East District and Programme Support

Paul Hedges, Deputy County Commissioner

When Paul Bell asked me to become his Deputy and responsible for the East of the County, it was a surprise and an honour. We have hit the ground running as we look at all aspects of the County. The County Commissioner has set out thoughts and plans for Hampshire over the next few years. This will include all the changes that will come down from Headquarters, which should help us all in the Roles that we have, to encourage others to take on more responsibility and help us to welcome others to join the movement and as Paul tells us to have fun.

Paul’s plan to create an even better Hampshire Scout County, to encourage us all to shout about the great activities that are put on for the youth right across the County. Please send reports and photographs to the Communications team at [email protected].

If you find that you are struggling and need confidential support, please email me at [email protected] we are here to support you.

Occasional badges, the responsibility of approving occasional badges has been delegated to me by the County Commissioner, we will endeavor to approve as many as we can, but please be aware that not all badges will be approved, please follow the process as laid out below.

• Send your badge design to me before you have any badges made
• All badges to include the Scout logo and what the badge is for.
• We may ask you to amend your badge before being approved.

As a county we are looking at ways we can communicate across Hampshire better and the first step is to combine the Communications and Digital team, under Sam Poole. Sam and his new team have been set some challenges to make this happen, so please bear with us, we will get there

This is me, please make yourself known to me, but please do not be offended if I do not remember your name straight away, the County team are here to support you in your role and to have fun.

Ferny Crofts

Kerie Wallace, ACC Ferny Crofts

Here at Ferny Crofts we were hoping for a return to normal, post Covid and all that stuff, and we haven’t been disappointed. The Scout, Guide, Duke of Edinburgh and School bookings have been tremendous, and these thrown in with the Birthday Parties and a few corporate events have meant that we have quite literally been rushed off our feet. So far we have improved on our 2019, the last comparable year, figures, by over four thousand visitors.

To cater for the new and extra visitors we have brought in some new activities/extra facilities; a second archery range, the exciting Mine Bus and the targeted Crossbows. These extra activities are part of the year-on-year strategy of introducing new activities each year so that Ferny Crofts always appears fresh to all our customers.

Our events at Ferny Crofts have served to show case the site –

Mud Run - Over 400 competitors ran and dragged their bodies through the mud, over obstacles, through swamps and quagmires and all finishing with a dip in the pond and colourful paint splash finish.

Explorer Camp – To celebrate twenty years of Explorer Scouting a festival style camp was run, with lots of music, loads of activities and ice cream, everyone like ice cream. Three hundred odd Explorers enjoyed the weekend.

Beaver Camp – The County Beavers came to Ferny Crofts, and not a tree was eaten! A full day’s entertainment ensued with everyone leaving exhausted.

County AGM – We welcomed the great and the good from Hampshire Scouting to visit our site and see it in all its glory, and most importantly, see Young People having fun on all the activities. It was also an opportunity to showcase Ferny Crofts to the Mayors and Councillors of Hampshire, many of whom had never been to Ferny Crofts before.

In all a very hectic and worthwhile six months for Ferny Crofts.

Hampshire Scouts Six-months Update: September 2022