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.
Howdy
BLOT: How are troops tracking personal safety awareness???
As a scoutmaster for a troop of 45 boys and a committee chair for a troop of 27 girls, we recently offered a classroom style version of the cyber chip / personal safety awareness material. For background, our troop lost a scout in 2021 to a cyber bullying situation. This has made cyber safety for young people a great focus for us.
Now that you have the background, we offer this “class” annually and in the past, we would update the cyber chip so that we knew when they got to Star (they likely already had scout rank), we would just need to check the date on their cyber chip (and verify that they scout had the discussion with their parent) and we could sign off on that requirement. With the new personal safety awareness, I have not found an easy way to track this other than to have a spreadsheet and look at that.
How are other troops dealing with this change? Has the BSA come up with any guidance to help us track this? Is there a way that the decision makers can help us implement their vision for requirement changes?
Thanks everyone!!!
@JayWatson - is this not req 6 in scout and star? those are able to be marked off in scoutbook and will be noted in the report builder requirements for said ranks.
Thanks for the reply
Let me give a scenario to better showcase my concern.
New scout joins in January 2024. Completes the Personal Safety Awareness program and has a chat with his parents. I mark the scout rank requirement #6. I don’t think that we should be marking the Star rank #6 requirement at this time since it will likely be a bit of time before he gets to first class and is ready for his star BoR. Even though we do cover the scout rank and star rank videos in our presentation, I think that the intent of presenting the material in 2 different ranks is so that the scouts are exposed to the material 2 separate times…not in one sitting.
Now to make this matter more complex, the scout completes our “classroom” program in 2025 for a second time and is currently 2nd class, but his 1st class BoR is next month, how do I keep track that he was in the classroom portion and did this already? For medium and larger sized troops, this becomes more challenging…
Thanks again
It says nothing about a year - the Scout just needs to do it again - they are different videos
With your parent or guardian, complete the exercises in the pamphlet How to Protect Your Children From Child Abuse: A Parent’s Guide and view the Personal Safety Awareness videos (with your parent or guardian’s permission).7.
The simple answer is the Scout cannot get credit for completing the Personal Safety Awareness Videos for Star rank until after completing the board of review for First Class.
We’re wandering into requirement interpretation, but technically that requirement doesn’t actually say “As a First Class Scout…” if I recall correctly.
All requirements for Star, Life, and Eagle, except for those
related to merit badges, must be fulfilled after the successful
completion of a board of review for the previous rank.
