Incorporating Mental Health issues into Boy Scouting 

The H&S Support Committee would like to see mental health issues addressed within the program. They are requesting feedback on the proposal. Their desire is to weave it into the advancement process. SME's are available to support this effort.

While scouting incorporates a good many aspects of physical health maintenance and injury/crisis management in its advancement process, aspects of mental health are not. Yet there are a number of aspects of mental health and illness that could be articulated and incorporated in the scouting education and advancement program.
A colleague talked about this matter with his nephew, who was an active scout. When asked about a scouting program to assess competencies in mental health, that scout suggested it would be a “great idea” to include this in the content of a merit badge. Indeed, he thought that Boy Scouts should be asked to have the following mental health competencies:
1. Have the ability to recognize signs of good and poor mental health in oneself and others
2. Know strategies for helping others with mental health problems
3. Be able to provide first aid for acute stress (“psychological first aid”)
4. Be familiar with different types of mental disorder
5. Recognize drug and alcohol abuse and their complications
This scout agreed that knowledge of drug and alcohol abuse and prevention are important, but he thought that material presently is covered fairly well. He suggested that material about mental health could be learned through a combination of reading and meetings with a mental health professional. He thinks that competency could be demonstrated through the combination of a written test and discussion or demonstration (i.e. role playing).

Local Tour Permits 

Tour permits have been around since the ‘60’s (as far back as I can find) for national tours. Local Tour permit lore is fuzzy when they came to be. We are re-examining their use and would like to use the innovation engine to see if they are beneficial to a local council or if scouting could be served better in another way. We know there are a wide variety of local standards on how these are administered.

Are local tour permits a beneficial tool for your council or units?

Round Up / Give a Buck / Change the Future 

Several volunteer and membership organizations are working with industry suppliers or conversely it may be the industry suppliers who want to associate with the organization to provide a way for purchasers to round off their order either online or at a point of sale. The NRA Round Up is probabaly the largest I'm aware of and is used by shooting retailers Midway USA & Brownells. Cabela's does an add a buck for the NRA as well.

If everytime someone bought something at a scout shop, tooth of time, or at scoutstuff.org, probably other applications as well. We should offer them the chance to "change the future" by simpling rounding up their total after tax, shipping, etc. That change could add up quickly.

Here is a link showing how the NRA has gained over $4.2MM from donations via Midway USA and over $6MM total since 1992.

http://www.midwayusa.com/nrapage.dll/gettotal?utm_source=nrasupport&utm_medium=homepage112808

Training Passport 

 Completed

Instead of having a card printed for each individual training program found in the OLC / PAS why not have a training passport that can be downloaded as a pdf, and printed. It would have all training that the individual had completed in one spot, show dates and expirations. Business card size (folded) would be great. Brand it with the BSA logo!

As an added benefit it would also inable volunteers and scouts to "check" to see that training not done in the OLC was properly credited.