ADCmohegan

This is one question that I would leave to the professionals. If a Licensed Psychologist or Psychiatrist says the scout is too disabled to perform the required testing, then councils medical review team should have an easy time approving alternate requirements for him. We are not in a position to judge for ourselves how to best proceed in this area. How long does a crippling phobia need to last for it to be Permanent in the eyes of the BSA? Id submit that if the treatment of this condition would delay the lads ability to complete the swimming requirements beyond the point where he could reasonably be expected to complete Eagle, then it is permanent enough.

"I just find it difficult to understand how National - whose Aims & Methods explicitly describe elections as part of the patrol method - OKs that type of arrangement." Because Shortridge, National is, and has been for at least two generations, a farce.

And when that boy leaves the program (taking 100,000's of others with him, its all good.

Yes, go and suffer you little Cretan. Only the strong shall survive.

Have you thought of finding a special needs scout troop to visit? Most councils have at least one, and there is usually a broad spectum of issues represented by these scouts.

Well, junior has returned from the Jamboree, with a renewed purpose. He is almost 16 and has done nothing to finish Eagle in over a year. Last night on the drive home he said, I have to talk to Mr. Harrison about finishing Personal Management, it is my last Eagle Required Merit badge. Interestingly enough, the hard part for most kids, the 13 week budget, was finished last year. He also discussed several potential Eagle Projects that his school, a non-profit school for High School Aged Students with learning disabilities, might just let him do. He wrote an E-mail to the head master last night at 10:00 asking him for a meeting to discuss it. To quote my son, It was an Epic Awesome Time, I think that means he enjoyed himself. The only real downer for him was the theft of all of his patches Tuesday Night. Some person, or persons unknown, raided his troops campsite baggage, sometime after dinner. They stole the bags of patches from about a 2 dozen scouts in his troop. This wasnt discovered until they were loading the bus to come home Wednesday Morning. I dont think there is any real solution to this, except to spend a fortune on E-bay in the coming weeks, to replace them.

I would add that anything that results in the levying of criminal charges that occurs during a scouting activity is grounds for removal in my book. The only time I had to removed a youth from my former troop was due to this reason. I didn't wait until the trial, which took almost 2 years to complete, before I asked the troop committee and the CO to consent to his removal from the troop. It was however, kind of a symbolic act, as the Council Exec had banned this youth from all scouting activities in our council, pending the outcome of the criminal case. The outcome of this case resulted in time in a youth facility and probation for the scout in question.