Long day today, with training from 9-5 (literally).
Mostly it was an okay day – I did enjoy the sessions on preparing to gain camping qualifications, and on using the new(ish) handbooks – but the sessions on risk management and cyber safety combined to make me incredibly frustrated, and not at all keen on being a leader.
The cyber safety session was firstly a good few years out of date, and entirely too focused on “scary bad internet people”. As someone who is reasonably comfortable with using the internet (hence, blogging!), the session just annoyed me, but for those who were not so comfortable with online environments, it would have just freaked them out. Honestly, the way the session going, you’d question why on earth girl guides has an online presence at all! Just silly, really.
But the risk assessment session really irked me. So *apparently*, not only do we need a standing hall risk assessment (that I can *sort of* understand), we also need one for every time we do *anything* out of the hall. Not just “think through the risks and be sensible”, but “write it down (pages of it!), record it, keep it for freaking ever”.
Well, if that’s not a way to discourage leaders, I don’t know what is!
I know from my readings elsewhere that Guiding in the UK is super keen on risk assessments, but until today, I never realised Australia had also gone down this (really annoying) pathway.
Well, we shall see. I’m not at all against sensible procedures and processes at all, but I do resent additional paperwork to do what we have always done… and given the questions from around the hall at the training today, I’m not the only one. So grr!!
However, lets end on a positive note: I think I could quite easily work towards my indoor camping qualification, and that would be a good thing for the unit đ
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