How does this effect current leaders? The change talks about the invite process. Where can we find out more about the update?
Will the invite process check for YPT as at least one parent is given a BSA number when they register their Cub Scout? My Lion and Tiger Adults are all on my roster as adults but without YPT, or background check.
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Peter,
Existing adults on the unit roster will not be affected if the BSA Member ID in Scoutbook is currently registered in the BSA in a position that requires YPT and a Criminal Background Check.
Lion and Tiger Adult Partners will be removed from the roster if they do not hold a registered position in the BSA.
The process does not check for YPT, it only looks to see if the BSA Member ID has a current registration. The registration process verifies YPT at the time of registration or recharter.
You will still be able to connect parents/guardians to their Scouts.
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I cannot begin to state how devastatingly painful this is going to be for our unit! ScoutBook has been the one place we could accurately track leader positions, including all the additional roles we each do, & get things done while waiting on Council. Before COVID, Council was notoriously slow to process applications & rarely ever updated the My.Scouting roster, even after Recharter. Anytime I would call to ask for roster fixes, they told me to just make it in the next Recharter. Now that majority staff is let go, & Council is volunteer run, good luck. My Pack’s Recharter has yet to be processed after 2 months, meaning Online Registration is currently blocked, meaning I literally CANNOT get my new Tiger Den Leader registered!
Each year newbie parents take up Den Leader and/or Den Admin for at least Lion & Tiger dens, I assign them the role in ScoutBook so that I can train them on the use of ScoutBook & DLE & they can gain the necessary hands-on experience. It is hard enough to recruit Cub leaders these days, adding more roadblocks & hassle is so far beyond the last thing we need right now…
We are taught in BSA Leader training to start by giving a parent “just one small task”, & now you’re flipping the script to say it just can’t be anything to do with calendar, or activity logs, or purchase orders, or…
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Josh,
This change is for youth protection purposes. The BSA needs to stop adults who have not taken Youth Protection Training and had a Criminal Background Check from having access to Scout’s & other adults Personally Identifiable Information (PII). The change only affects adults who have no registered position with the BSA Member ID (MID) listed in Scoutbook. Adults registered with another unit, a district or Council with that MID will not be removed.
Scoutbook will be adding an indication of adults that are not registered to the leader portion of the roster well before March 1. This will give units time to get registration paperwork in place if these truly are unit leaders.
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Institutional Head is a registered position and is available in Scoutbook. Does the BSA do a background check on folks in this position? In my limited experience, I have not seen or heard of using an adult application to become the IH. Typically happens with recharter, which I do not fill out.
The Institutional Head will be removed from the Scoutbook roster on March 1 unless the individual is registered in another position. The Institutional Head is not required to take Youth Protection Training or have a Criminal Background Check.
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Perhaps you’ll allow me a tangent here. Let’s say there’s a troop and that troop publishes information and distributes it to those who want a copy. Those copies contain the names, address, date of birth, and electronic contact information of every registered member of the unit, adult and youth. Additionally for the youth it includes rank, grade in school.
Copies are sat out for anyone present to take with them when they leave. Anyone includes non-registered family and friends that may be present.
Is there a BSA policy that addresses this and if so, might you link to it?
The “roadblock and hassle” is an application, YPT, and background check.
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That’s not strictly true in all councils. There are councils which require full position training in order to register. I’m not saying this is an insurmountable hurdle, just pointing out that those of us (like me) whose councils only require the “bare minimum” in order to register tend to forget that not all councils are the same way.
Every Scout deserves a trained leader. Training is most certainly not a roadblock.
Training is the on ramp from a surface street to a freeway. One is getting up to speed and then merging with other traffic.
The argument of training being a roadblock is absolute nonsense.
Edit: I add that an untrained leader is a roadblock to a unit’s effectiveness in carrying out the program as specified by BSA.
Untrained leaders, leaders who do not follow their training, they are part and parcel the cause of the problems faced today by BSA.
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I hear what you’re saying, but NO, based on this statement, you are intentionally enabling people in your unit to skirt fundamental Youth Protection requirements.
I can’t express how big a problem I have with this.
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Anyone serving on the unit committee is supposed to be registered as a committee member. This has been BSA policy for years.
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This. This is an example of what I wrote in another comment here on this post.
Having non-registered adults serve on a committee is going against the training you should have taken.
If you have taken training, you KNOW that what you are doing is wrong and being as Scout like as possible here, you are not part of the solution but, you are part of the problem.
This you should know and without pulling punches, shame on you.
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The use of volunteers is a balancing act. Someone that attends committee meetings and helps plan and execute the program is obviously someone that needs to be registered. Someone that brings food to a meeting once a year does not. And somewhere in between these examples of max and min is the point where a person crosses the line and needs to register.
For us, the line became BSA’s position that a meeting / activity must have two registered, over 21, leaders. Each of our dens has been encouraged to have 3 registered leaders - DL, ADL, and USR. Then if either the DL or ADL can’t make it to a meeting, hopefully the USR can fill in. The result is, we have folks registered that would normally not register.
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With respect, you misread what I said. I said dedicated volunteer parents. These are not members of the Pack Committee and do not vote. They are not Den Leaders that set and execute the education program of the Pack. They do not meet the 72-hour adult attendance threshold for registration defined in the Barriers to Abuse documentation and they do not have Scout-direct leadership contact as part of the regular course of events. In cases where they might have scout-direct contact, we are talking about Pack Meetings or events like Pinewood Derby where other barriers to abuse are clearly in place while they MC the event (as an example). We are talking about parents who are the first to answer the call and help out with various events like helping me assemble virtual Blue & Gold packets in my garage for several hours last Friday night or take attendance to help the Den Leader while relaxing in their camp chair watching their scout in their den meeting.
We had used the Den Admin/Committee assignments in Scoutbook to make them easy to collect into an email communication group in Scoutbook for sending messages, calendar invites, as well as give them access to support Den Leaders. That capability will disappear with this change. I did a little investigation and found I can create “groups” to help with the email selection (I didn’t know that until today) so we will change the way we manage email in Scoutbook to these parents with this new information.
I would also propose that we create a category of SB access that allows for a parent to support a Den Leader without access to the PII that was discussed as one of the key reasons for this change in system capability. Any parent should be able to help a Den Leader take attendance at a den meeting or submit Den level advancement items completed during an event for future Den Leader approval while they are sitting off to the side in their lawn chair observing the activities. I do not see how limiting that kind of SB Den Admin access to only registered and paid adult volunteers enhances youth protection and adds a barrier to abuse but I see many ways where it limits the option of Den Leaders to ask for help in a pinch. This kind of access would be no different than the old days when the den roster was on a clipboard and one of the parents ticked the boxes and handed it back to the Den Leader at the end of the night.
Hopefully this makes it much more clear on the intent of my original post which was hastily created and poorly stated. On a personal note, I’m sad to know that because of a poorly written post, I’m seen as part of the problem instead of a long-term dedicated volunteer.
I apologize but no, I did not.
That reads that you have unregistered committee members.
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I would like to propose that you get those parents properly registered and trained instead of putting effort into avoiding it. If you have parents doing committee work – like supporting direct-contact leaders and managing Scoutbook for them – which gives them access to the PII of others, THEY NEED TO BE REGISTERED
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Respectfully, the council just slapped a $90 fee on top of the $42 registration. I am not asking my dad who sets up chairs before a pack meeting to pay $132 for the privilege of setting up those chairs.
Thank goodness I am about to retire if this is the BSA expectation.
Glenn
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Glenn, I don’t mean to pile on, but setting up chairs is very different from the other tasks described above. Meeting setup also doesn’t require Scoutbook access.
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