Safety

Safety

Boy Scouts of America (BSA), the umbrella organization for both Cub Scouts and Scouts MSA, is committed to the safety of its youth members and adult leadership. This comes in two main forms:

  • Protecting the youth from abuse, and
  • Ensuring the safety of scouting activities.

Protecting Youth from Abuse

BSA is committed to protecting every participant from every form of abuse (physical, sexual, or emotional), whether the source of abuse is an adult or other youth participant. It does this by:

  • Empowering and educating the youth (with their parents) to recognize and report abuse;

  • Training every adult leader to prevent, recognize, stop, and report abuse; and

  • Eliminating the opportunity for abuse (by requiring, for example, the presence of two adults at every Scout activity).

More information can be found at BSA's Youth Protection page.

Safe Activities

Scouts love adventure, but BSA is committed to making adventures as safe as possible for its participants. In particular, BSA's Guide to Safe Scouting outline its policies regarding:

  • Choosing safe and age-appropriate adventures,
  • Planning those activities to ensure safety,
  • How to safely teach and exercise outdoor skills (knife safety, fire safety, etc.),
  • The facilities and supervision needed for 'dangerous' activities (riflery, archery, swimming, boating, etc), and
  • Prohibited activities (pyrotechnics, chainsaws, martial arts, hunting, etc.).

All activities, including those explicitly allowed by the Guide to Safe Scouting, must be overseen by the adult leadership of the unit, and the adult leaders can (and must) veto any activity they deem unsafe.

Next steps