Making changes to activities, badges and awards
Learn how to make changes to activities, badges and awards.
At Scouts, we want every young person to enjoy adventure, have fun and feel challenged. Our volunteers can make changes to our activities, badges and awards so everyone can join in.
Our programme is designed to be fun, rewarding and challenging. When you're making changes to activities, badges and awards, you should focus on improving access to badges and awards, rather than reducing the challenge of their requirements or changing the focus. This may include adapting some or all of the requirements, or providing additional support for the young person.
Tips for making changes to activities, badges and awards
- Talk to the young person, if appropriate, and their parents and carers to learn more about their support needs. Use our guidance on planning individual support to create an Individual Support Plan for the young person.
- All our activities have guidance on how you can change them to be more accessible. Look for the subheadings ‘Change the level of challenge’ and ‘Make it accessible’.
- Run activities that are accessible for the entire Section rather than changing the requirements for a single person, so they don’t feel singled out.
- Think about adapting individual challenge activities into team challenges, so all young people can use their strengths to achieve a team goal.
- You could involve all young people in decisions when looking to alter requirements to help them understand the reasons for changes.
- Help young people understand that being fair means everyone gets to join in, even if activities differ.
Example: Going on a Hike
A Cub Section is planning a hike for their Our Adventure Challenge Badge. One young person in the Section is a wheelchair user. The volunteers want to get the Cubs involved in decision making, so they find local country parks and Wildlife Trust sites with wheelchair accessible routes and ask the young people to decide where they’d like to go. They show the young people how to identify wheelchair accessible routes on the country park maps and ask them to plot out the route they’re going to take. This way, the whole Section can take part in planning and going on the hike.
Making changes to Scout Top Awards and Duke of Edinburgh
Scout Top Awards, like the King’s Scout Award and the Duke of Edinburgh Award, are flexible to support all young people. For these awards, changes must be approved before starting any activities. Mencap's Gateway Award is designed specifically for young people with learning disabilities.
Scout Top Awards: Get approval from the County Lead Volunteer.
Duke of Edinburgh Awards: Get approval from the DofE licensing organisation.
Gateway Award: Get approval from Mencap.