Information for Parents
How do I know what’s going on?
The most important communication channel between the scout group and parents is Online Scout Manager (OSM). OSM is where you can see details of upcoming meetings, sign your child up for camps and events, answer calls for parent volunteer helpers, track your child’s badge progress, and make payments for camps an events. Access to OSM is protected by secure passwords; you will be given a login when your child joins the group.
Each section also has a WhatsApp chat group, organised by a parent representative, where you can see helpful reminders, get questions answered and make arrangements for sharing transport, etc. Section leaders also communicate with parents by email.
The website you’re looking at now is our public face, open to anyone. Here you can read about how the group as a whole works, see news about what our Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and Explorers have been up to, and find general information about forthcoming events.
Uniform and Badges
Young people love earning new badges! Their parents, perhaps, are not always as keen, as there is sewing to be done. But where are the badges supposed to go? Below, for each section, are links to the official uniform requirements and badge placement guidance on the Scout Association website. If a link doesn’t work, please send an email to our webmaster to let us know.
Beavers uniform and badge placement
Cubs uniform and badge placement
Scouts uniform and badge placement
Explorers uniform and badge placement
Scruff Kit
As well as the smart uniform with all the badges, our young people wear a “scruff kit” for messy or outdoor activities. This consists of a scarlet T-shirt and sweatshirt or hoodie. These are bright red to match our scarves and make our young people easy to spot when out in the wild. You have two purchase options:
- Plain bright red T-shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts can be bought cheaply from online shops such as eBay. We can then supply a free 1st Weston Green badge to sew on. (Examples: t-shirt / hoodie / zipped hoodie)
- You can get T-shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts printed with the scout logo and group name from One Stop Scouting. Select T-shirt, hoodie, or zoodie, the colour scarlet and enter the group name 1st Weston Green. If you want to pay extra to have the back printed as well, that’s fine.
Moving Up
Young people move up from one section to the next at the start of a new term, soon after they pass a certain age – 8 years from Beavers to Cubs, 10.5 years from Cubs to Scouts, and 14 years from Scouts to Explorers. Before this happens, they may be invited to attend one or two trial meetings, to get to know how the new section works.
Beavers moving to Cubs will continue to wear their Beavers uniforms for their first few Cubs meetings, but will need to have a new Cubs uniform for their investiture, which will happen after a few weeks. The same applies for the other moving up transitions. Some of the badges your young person is given in Beavers can be transferred to their Cubs uniform and so on. These include the badges that identify them as a member of the Surrey scouting county and of 1st Weston Green scout group. Also any joining in badges (small square ones) and staged activity badges (the round blue ones) follow the young person up through the sections and can be transferred to their new uniform. Some badges (challenge badges and activity badges) are specific to a section. They can be transferred to a camp blanket.
Camp Blankets
A camp blanket is so much more than just something to keep you warm on a chilly evening. Usually a plain, grey wool or fleece blanket with a neck hole cut in the middle so it can be worn like a poncho, a camp blanket is where all a scout’s badges end up once they are no longer needed on your uniform. So as your child move up through scouts, their camp blanket becomes a living history of their scouting journey. Every badge they are ever awarded will eventually end up on their camp blanket, along with other souvenir badges that they will collect from camps, trips and from your travels with scouts. With time, their camp blanket will become something to be worn with pride whenever they gather with other scouts around a campfire. Some of our leaders and parents have camp blankets festooned with hundreds of badges that go all the way back to when they joined their first scout group as a young child.
