Welcome! This forum has a treasure trove of great info – Scouters helping Scouters! Just a heads up, though - all content, information, and opinions shared on this forum are those of the author, not the BSA.
For a Scout who is connected in Scoutbook to a Merit Badge Counselor who is not in the Scout’s unit, is there a way for the Scout to Send Message in Scoutbook to that Merit Badge Counselor?
I serve as a Merit Badge Counselor and received an email message from Scout using email outside of Scoutbook. He didn’t copy his parents or the Scoutmaster, so it did not follow youth protection procedures. I replied including his parents and Scoutmaster to let them know of the communication. My understanding is that only parents are supposed to know the Scout’s email address. That is why I am asking the question posed above.
I thought that scouts could email anyone from Scoutbook to whom they were connected in Scoutbook, but I might be wrong about that. I’ve never had a chance to play with it on the live system.
There is not a national requirement (of which I am aware) that only parents know the scout’s email address. Many MBCs and units do not use Scoutbook, so they wouldn’t be able to rely on an email obfuscation through Scoutbook anyway. There is a national requirement that scouters copy at least one other adult on all communications with scouts. There’s a BSA interpretation out there somewhere (as I understand it) which says that a youth who emails an adult without copying another adult isn’t violating YP rules. We just need to respond to that message with a copy to another adult, and a reminder that the rules require that we have two adults on all communications.
