2. Supporting those applying for permits and facilitating opportunities for them

While the permit scheme is an enabling device, designed to allow volunteers within Scouting to lead adventurous activities without the need for external professional level qualifications, to some volunteers without an understanding of the scheme it can seem like a barrier to the provision of activities. It is therefore important that you make sure volunteers in your County are aware of the opportunities it can provide and the way it can be personalised to the level they wish to lead. This could be through; providing contact details for volunteers to get advice and information, attending Team meetings to explain the scheme and its benefits, providing information stands at County and District events, or any other method that you find works for you locally.

As mentioned in ‘Supporting Activity Assessors’ the most effective style of assessment is assessment courses which need to be promoted widely throughout your County and beyond. Along with assessment courses, there will also be times when applicants will need to find an individual Assessor. This may be for an activity that you have no assessment courses running, for a very specialist restriction on a permit that isn’t easily assessed on a course, or due to timescales and availability they are not able to attend any of the assessment courses running. In this situation, there are three ways of finding an Assessor, and applicants will likely appreciate your help in this search. These are:

• Use the Assessor Search Function within the application form.
• Use an external Assessor. This is someone who has nothing to do with Scouting but has the qualifications required for an external Assessor. They could be a technical adviser that you use in the County to provide learning and assessment, a self-employed instructor working within their activity, or an instructor working at an activity centre or provider. They will need to be given a copy of the relevant assessment checklist and make sure they are aware of what it is they are assessing and what they're signing off.

While many volunteers will already have the skills needed to get a permit, there will be others who will be looking for additional learning and to gain new skills to bring them up to this level. Providing, finding and promoting these opportunities is important in ensuring volunteers have the skills to be able to lead these activities for young people in Scouting.

Often this will be through County Programmes Sub Team specialising in a specific activity,  so these opportunities will just need to be promoted widely within the County. Other options are to bring in external technical advisers to run specialist courses, to find courses being run by Scout campsites and activity centres, or to promote external activity courses such as NGB courses.

There is funding available to potential permit holders to help them attend permit assessments.

And finally, all permit holders must be aware of when their permit expires. Once a permit has expired that leader will not be able to lead the activity anymore until they have gained a new one, so they should be aware of the expiry date so that they can arrange to see an Assessor to be assessed for a new one before this happens. Reports of all permits, including expiry dates, can be pulled off the membership system, the membership system will also notify members directly.

A system of regularly checking this and informing permit holders whose expiry date is imminent can be set up. This may be something that you need to check Districts are doing, or it may be the County decides to look after themselves.

Consideration should also be made for checking local records for the expiry of Under 18s permits and notifying/supporting their renewal.