[Closed] This family who sued the Scouts…

It really depends on how it was said and implied doesn't it, were they trying to get shot of him or something else?

Alternative point of view: the kid was singled out and excluded from activities based on one incident and the fact that he was autistic.

Volunteering is great but it doesn't justify discrimination.

Regarding the money, it doesn't sound like they immediately went for legal action. Part of the settlement went to charity and part is in a trust fund for the kid.

Link?

Was he singled out though? It sounds like they said that in future he required extra supervion, which means that a parent needed to come to off site activities.

The kid did a runner. Which is pretty serious. The RA for subsequent trips would have to include this.

I be that the leaders walk away and the pack folds.

Link?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43519296

Beverly Gleeson said the group's decision would "single Ben out"

Whereas this case...

[img] [/img]

I think the scout leaders were wrong. I suspect so do the scouts organisation, which is why they have apologised and said they will investigate the incident.

the BBC article says the lad does not require the same level of supervision at school that the scout leaders said were necessary.  Also, he didn’t “ do a runner”, the article says they were in an indoor facility and he ran a short distance away from the group. Something quite understandable for someone on the autistic spectrum to do if they are experiencing an overload. Hopefully the Scouts organisation can learn form this and offer training or education to its volunteers and leaders to have a better understanding of some of the difficulties some of their members might have. That must be a better solution than exclusion or discrimination.

Found it. There's always more to these things than is reported, sounds like a situation that was poorly handled.

However...

I can't see how the lawsuit was anything other than mercenary. What damages have incurred that warrant a payout of £42000?

I'm sure the devil is in the detail - maybe wrong to assume but I can't see them getting £40k compensation if the Cubs took all reasonable measures to try and include him. If it did just come down to he needed 1:1 supervision on field trips I don't think it's reasonable to expect the Cubs to provide this but I don't think a judge would either.

As a member and past member of several volunteer organisations, I dislike immensely the idea that people sue over stuff that in the olden days would have been sorted out by appropriate discussions between individuals, but there seems to be more to it than meets the eye here.  eg: "breach of privacy and under data protection legislation - claiming emails and a briefing to parents had identified them" - if that has been defamatory, etc. to either them or the kid, I might be pissed off about it too.

We’ve seen this from both sides locally, one group ended up disbanding because of two incidents with parents who couldn’t see that the leaders were volunteers and not trained to deal with the needs of their kid and they weren’t willing to work with the group to find a balance between the freedom that the parents thought their kid should have had but the extra care and supervision he needed. On the flip side my sons group have 4 gepreat leaders who have had real success with parents willing to give extra help where needed and as a result we have such a diverse and accommodating group that a few kids are allowed the freedom and independence that their parents weren’t expecting and didn’t feel any entitlement to.

i guess  we don’t know all the ins and outs of the case but the whole thing makes me feel uneasy.

This young lad had been in beavers, cubs and had moved to scouts,had been away previous times,but this time he was ill leading up to the trip,ended up going a day later,and then having an episode,parents were phoned up twice,second time there were three people were trying to control him,i think the group said he couldn't go on anymore trips,difficult one,,as are we expecting volunteers to deal with everything,got to question the parents for letting him go in the first place.Parents have just been on Victoria,

 I might be pissed off about it too.

Oh, me too, don't get me wrong. I don't know how £40k would lessen that though.

Beeb says parents are both lawyers so quite plausible they'd 'default to legal' on this.

Ultimately this is a real shame for all concerned as the fall out will only have a negative impact on what is probably already a fragile institution (Harry please comment) in terms of more RA / arse covering for volunteers and less time to build rafts and get mucky.

53:40 on here (thanks Decky)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09x5jfw/victoria-derbyshire-26032018

We're lucky that we have a good bunch of leaders and parents. We did an 8 mile hike yesterday with 12 kids and 10 adults. I wouldn't have been happy if it was 12 kids and 3 adults, especially if one had a track record of needing extra help. Also, I wouldn't send my daughter on an activity like that. It wouldn't be fair on, or safe for, anyone involved.

offer training or education to its volunteers and leaders

As if the volunteer leaders don't have enough training to do as it is!!  It would be better to have a mandatory training session for parents to explain that all the leaders are volunteers and scouts isn't the cheap childcare alternative that some of them think it is.

The lawyer parents were asked to help out at the cub pack, but rather than give up some of therir precious time they sue the scouts.  I bet those lawyers are on far more money than any of the leaders at the scout group.............

Agree with OP, too much blame game and it’s attracting hopefully the wrong kind of press towards these bullyish parents.

My first reaction was against the parents.

i just listened to them on the show, and it seems the issue was the reaction of the scouts, emailing/briefing against the parents. My local experience of scouting is the organisation is stuck in the 1950s! The local leaders are amazing & get the utmost  Respect though.

I help coaching local kids cricket, and one of the groups has an autistic kid. The head coach in that group is amazing with him. Personally I couldn’t cope. I know the parents too, and they are fully supportive of the coach in whatever decisions he makes, just glad that their kid can be involved.

boils my dixie.

Do you also hate meeces to pieces?

This has left me wondering what kind of person thinks that suing a charitable organisation, staffed by volunteers, for the sole benefit of children, is a good idea?

I've no doubt they were wronged, but was this really the best course of action.

Having had first hand experience of the difficulties scout groups have finding leaders or even just parent helpers, as someone said above, I'd be surprised if that group is still running in 6 months time.

I help coaching local kids cricket

CHEAT!!!

I've been a Beaver Leader for many years but I can see people walking away now. The amount of red tape & regulation is already a burden. I have no doubt there will be a whole swathe of updates to the Scouting POR resulting from this.

I've had a few children with conditions where we have had to request the parent stays with them. The vast majority are totally supportive & understanding. Sadly, this lads parents fancied flexing their legal muscles against a volunteer organisation. Shame on them for that as its a totally ridiculous & needless way to resolve it. What folk fail to realise is that if a child decides to go off you need min of two adults to fetch them back, otherwise your left with a Safeguarding issue. Take two adults way & the rest of the children are put at risk. I'd give up my warrant before I'd put children at risk & sadly, I think that's exactly what will start to happen.

There are no winners here.

This has left me wondering what kind of person thinks that suing a charitable organisation, staffed by volunteers, for the sole benefit of children, is a good idea?

I’ve no doubt they were wronged, but was this really the best course of action.

This.

 I suspect so do the scouts organisation, which is why they have apologised and said they will investigate the incident.

The cynic in me suggests that organisations may settle / apologise for things when they don't actually think that they are in the wrong, as it can be substantially cheaper than going to court and winning would be. Not saying that this is the case here, but it certainly can be.

So rather than volunteer to help they decided to sue. Awesome. So, who will provide the activities etc. for their son when volunteers, who let's not forget do much, much more than rock up on scout night, decide that enough is enough and walk away. Having a sibling who is profoundly autistic means that I can have a degree of sympathy with the parents but when it comes to extracting £42K from a charitable organisation run by committed volunteers (that word again) I'm afraid that sympathy vanishes.

[i]natrix wrote:[/i]

The lawyer parents were asked to help out at the cub pack, but rather than give up some of therir precious time they sue the scouts.

Where are you getting that from? In the interview linked above they suggest that they had been along on trips with cubs and that everything had been fine, but on going up to scouts they'd discussed it with the group and agreed that he would be fine by himself despite offering to go (and offering again when an issue arose).

Clearly that's only one side of the story and it doesn't quite all ring true, but then the Scout Association do seem to be sincere in their apologies and making changes. I still think there must have been some other way to handle this than suing for money, but then lawyers will lawyer.

TBH I reckon both sides have got it a lot wrong. Are they really happy that their current course of action is the best thing for their son? I'm sure having him outed on national TV will help him enormously.

Money grabbing ****s.  Both lawyers btw.

Can't see this encouraging people to volunteer for the Scouts....

Scouts seems to be dying round my way. A lot go to cubs, but @10% move up to scouts.

Wrong of the parents on many levels. Where do they think the £40k came from? Bet it would take a pack 15 years of subs to accrue £40k and thats before any exes. Sad. Matching white BMW's or Audis wouldn't surprise me while Akela rocks up in his Picasso full of tent poles.

There's a lot we aren't being told here, from both sides, I'd like to see full details but of course it hasn't gone to court. The fact that the Scouts made an out of court settlement and have apologised suggests something went wrong and they didn't want it running to court and setting a precedent.

Our group did an amazing job with an autistic Scout, but it needed the help and support of his school and parents to make it work. The school even paid for his support worker to go to an international jamboree so he could go with the troop. Security at the jamboree soon brought him back if he disappeared. We have another lad just joined who needs 121 support, and there's a few at various points on the spectrum in between.

We are lucky that our leaders have had the training and support to make the "reasonable adjustments" the law requires. But it's a proper dilemma for volunteer based groups. No one in Scouting at county level or below is paid for what they do. Trying to get an extra volunteer to support someone who needs it will be tricky. No volunteer, no reasonable adjustment - is the law now expecting a local group to find a volunteer every time one is needed? Does a reasonable adjustment mean an activity for 20-30 kids must be cancelled because one extra volunteer can't be found for one of the kids?

Really tough on voluntary organisations to get it right.

>Really tough on voluntary organisations to get it right.

Esp if the parents just sue rather than volunteering to help out.

Whatever the details I think taking £42K from a charity is a pretty low thing to do.

>Whatever the details I think taking £42K from a charity is pretty low.

Esp one which looked after their kid using unpaid volunteers!

A concern I have is just because the scout leaders were volunteers and giving up their free time,  does not mean they can discriminate against a child, possibly due to not understanding the individuals needs. If you are running a club open to all children then you will realise that some children take more care or time than others. Singling  out these children is not the right way to go. There will be times when some children will have to be excluded but this should be based on the child’s behaviour rather than the leaders lack of understanding the situation.

As has been mentioned above, there are some exceptional volunteers and leaders who go out of their way to try to understand and support all people they work with resulting in a very inclusive club. It would appear, somewhere with this group this has not happened. Blaming the parents because they are lawyers is missing the point.

Playing devil's advocate to the above.

At what point does the price of inclusivity in terms of time for the volunteers and cost for the organisation (training is not free) make providing the service unviable.

I'm not saying all efforts to include all children shouldn't me made, they should but everything comes with a costs and the scouts are reliant on the good will of volunteers and subscriptions from members.

The parents being willing to take £42K is very low and I'm not sure that them being lawyers is missing the point.

[i]roper wrote:[/i]

<span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">As has been mentioned above, there are some exceptional volunteers and leaders who go out of their way to try to understand and support all people they work with resulting in a very inclusive club. It would appear, somewhere with this group this has not happened. Blaming the parents because they are lawyers is missing the point.</span>

I think a lot of people are blaming the parents for choosing to sue because they're lawyers, which is a fair point. As I wrote above, it seems there is fault on both sides - clearly something went wrong in the troop in the first place, but their method of forcing a resolution of the issue is also wrong.

Clearly somebody made a mistake but these are volunteers, other parents, kindly souls who generally want to bring fun and a broader outlook on life to other peoples kids. If we expect them to deal with everything and everyone as if they were a professional then we are sunk. The kids will have to stay home on their computers or on street corners hassling old ladies and shopkeepers.

Like many above I am a Cub volunteer (section assistant). I have also helped out in mtb coaching with a lad with aspergers. In the mtb setting we try to be equal and inclusive but sometimes there's too much going on for the lad and he needs a quieter bit of 1 to 1 and then he learns the skills and all's good and the group is then back together. But it's much tougher in Scouts from a safeguarding point of view and you would suddenly need an additional 2 leaders if for any reason you were out of sight of the other leaders. So it would be really easy to be short-staffed in an instant. More volunteers is the answer, but like most places, getting parents to volunteer seems increasingly hard. Regardless of all of this, suing the Scouts is really low. Yes there has been an issue,  but what sort of folk go legal when bit of a chat, lessons learnt and a call for some volunteering could have resolved this. Bonkers.

If you hold volunteer groups to professional standards as if they were a profit making enterprise, you'll just end up with no volunteers.....

That's not the same as excusing all unprofessional behaviour, just there has to be a compromise.

NB I help out with the local Hockey club and have had a dozen under 10s to look after on my. There is one autistic kid (or similar) but his dad is always with him, so that's one less thing to worry about.

Personally I am not comfortable with the parents taking the money either. However I am more concerned with a young child experiencing discrimination because his autistic needs appear not to have been met in the scout pack.

As has just been said, good leaders ‘bring fun and a broader outlook on life..’  not exclusion or discrimination due to lack of understanding of the challenges faced by a child.

Aracer asked

Where are you getting that from?

I got it from the BBC article linked to above:

Ben Gleeson joined a group in Hertfordshire in 2015, but was later told he could not go to camps or take part in athletics without supervision.

So, if one of the parents had gone along to supervise their child it would have been OK.

Incidentally, as mentioned above Beverly Gleeson (the mum) said the group’s decision would “single Ben out”.  Unlike the parents decision which has led to his name and face being plastered all over the news, that won't single him out I'm sure, oh no.

Incidentally our cub pack where I'm a leader has an autistic cub who is far easier to deal with than some of the other cubs who are just poorly behaved.

Yes there has been an issue,  but what sort of folk go legal when bit of a chat, lessons learnt and a call for some volunteering could have resolved this. Bonkers.

How do you know that wasn't tried or became not an option because of the 'briefing and emails' that seem to form part of the scenario?

While I'll reiterate I'm not comfortable with the situation clearly there's something in it that seems to mean the scouts were happy to settle out of court and to keep the details private.  There's an assumption they just went straight for the cash, which I'm not sure is valid.

#takes2totango

What folk fail to realise is that if a child decides to go off you need min of two adults to fetch them back, otherwise your left with a Safeguarding issue. Take two adults way & the rest of the children are put at risk. I’d give up my warrant before I’d put children at risk & sadly, I think that’s exactly what will start to happen.

This is what worries me (I'm a Asst. Beaver Scout Leader). We have an autistic child and for weekly meetings and activities, we know how to deal with him and get on fine.

For camps/sleepovers (we are a new leadership team, planning our first), we have one of his parents PVG'd and seemingly happy to come along. There are specific problems/risks that we have identified with the beaver and the problem is exactly down to ratios and safeguarding. That one parent can basically do a job that would require two leaders. That's two leaders who can't be included in normal ratios, so it becomes even harder to get the adult cover to run events. It's hard enough to get enough suitable adults - we need four to cover our colony away from the hall, five if we expand (we have a waiting list). We only have three leaders.

At what point does the price of inclusivity in terms of time for the volunteers and cost for the organisation (training is not free) make providing the service unviable.

The bar on "reasonable adjustment" is set really quite high. I don't think many people really appreciate how far courts push that standard. Organisations have to go a long way to justify anything other than full inclusion. What is legally seen as reasonable would, to many people, seem unreasonable.