Inclusivity

Ever since Scouts began, we’ve brought young people together from different backgrounds to enjoy adventurous experiences, learn new skills, and have fun.

More recently, we’ve made brilliant leaps forward to make our movement more inclusive. We’ve made sure our LGBTQ+ young people and volunteers can be themselves, our Race Equity project is gathering momentum, and we’re starting Scouts in areas we weren’t serving before.

While we’re proud of what we’ve achieved so far, there’s more we want to do to make our movement as inclusive as possible. We’re not stopping until every young person can join, enjoy themselves and thrive in Scouts.

Our Inclusivity goals

By the end of 2025:

• We’ll have opened 500 more sections in areas of deprivation, reaching young people who could benefit the most
• The number of adult volunteers from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds will reflect wider society, with a minimum target of at least 5%

Progress on inclusivity

Creating and protecting Scout groups in areas of deprivation

Our Growth & Communities Team has created online tools, delivered workshops, and worked alongside volunteers to agree local plans to recruit adult volunteers and open new provision in areas of deprivation (where possible).

By doing so, we’ve created an additional 434 sections in the bottom 30% of the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) since 2018, with just 66 left to reach our target of 500 by 2025.

Squirrels

In September 2021, we launched Squirrels, our new section for 4 and 5 year olds. At this age, non-formal education can make a real difference, so we’re committed to providing Squirrels for young people who wouldn’t usually access Scouts.

Our amazing volunteers have opened 1,000 Squirrel Dreys (as at year end), with 25% of those Dreys in IMD 1–3.

These Squirrel Dreys are some of our most ethnically diverse Scout groups, with 34% of them having 10% or more young people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds and 52% in urban communities.

We’ve boosted volunteer recruitment, with 48% of newly recruited Squirrel volunteers being completely new to Scouts. We’ve created an extensive range of online tools, including guidance, workshops, peer-to-peer guidance, and webinars, to support volunteers starting new provision and furthering their reach. 900 adult volunteers have come along to these sessions during the last year.

Race Equity

After creating our Race Equity Project Board last year, we’ve published our vision for race equity, and our roadmap for achieving it.

We’ve recruited a co-creation group of volunteers from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds with a wide range of roles in Scouts. This group is helping us co-design the tools and support we offer our movement. This’ll help us reach our target of at least 5% of our volunteers being from Black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds, and for those volunteers to feel welcome and able to thrive in Scouts.

Part of the reason we’re sharing tools and support is to promote good examples of inclusion in Scouts, specifically around race inclusion, so we can learn openly about what works best. We’re still sharing these stories, and we’ll keep collecting and sharing them as we continue to learn and grow.

We’re reviewing how we appoint and support volunteers for senior and UK leadership roles. Our volunteer leadership doesn’t reflect society, or even our movement. We know it’ll take sustained work to attract, support and retain volunteers who aren’t yet represented at these levels.

Our data and insights team are creating a brand new dashboard for County Commissioners (and equivalents in other parts of the UK) to easily view and compare data of local Scouts demographics with the local ONS / National census data. This’ll give volunteers more understanding of what their community’s demographic data looks like, as well as help them work towards realistic goals. We released the first version of the dashboard in February 2023.

Creating a new learning experience

We’re creating a learning experience for inclusion that everyone finds accessible and useful. This includes dedicated Equity, Diversity and Inclusion learning, while making sure all our learning supports our drive to be even more inclusive. Hundreds of volunteers across the movement have worked with us to make sure our content:

• is easy to digest
• is challenging enough to support us to do more
• offers useful tips and information for volunteers to put into practice on the ground, where it really matters.

Supporting members with intimate and personal care needs

We’ve worked on our Intimate and Personal Care policy, which we’ll publish later in 2023. This’ll help volunteers draw up personal care plans for young people who may need extra support, whether they have asthma, diabetes, or more complex care needs.

Pride events

Last year, Scouts across the UK got involved in over 30 Pride events. The UK inclusion team supported a group of over 35 local pride coordinators in Counties/Areas/Regions (Scotland) (and even Branches, like Bermuda). Beyond those online meetings, there’s an ongoing online space for the networks to collaborate and interact.

The Pride network continues to support and lead on Scouts attendance at Pride in London each year, with a presence in the Family Area and Youth Zone.

What’s next

After the research we carried out as part of our Race Equity Project, we’re now developing principles and a blueprint for how Scouts can change and adapt to meet the needs of the people we want to serve better. We’ll take learnings from the Muslim Scout Fellowship to see what’s worked, what’s transferable and where we can improve. By doing so, we can create a viable community-led model for Scouts.

We’ll review our approach to complaints, supporting members to uphold a zero-tolerance approach to discrimination, while creating space for others to learn and grow. We’ll better help our movement to gain the confidence, skills and know-how when responding to any issues, and we’ll improve our systems for capturing learning and making changes when something’s gone wrong. This’ll also help assure potential members of the treatment they can expect from us.

To drive forward the strategic changes we want to make, we’re creating an EDI Programme of Work. It’ll be led by a larger team and will focus on embedding EDI across our movement and supporting cross-organisational learning. We’ll soon publish more details on our priorities for this work.