Retroactive Awards?

[karunamom3]

Can awards (belt loops) be recognized retroactively in our Council's system?

We, meaning the new leaders, recently found out that the old leaders were not giving credit for all of the boys achievements. The boy would get the belt loop for an elective, but it would not be entered into our Council's computer system (and I supposethat means National too?).

What they were doing was taking each ranks book and entering in the required electives and entering the number of electives required by randomly choosing an elective from the book. Ugh. Our boys complete many more electives than the few required. 

As new CM can I add in all of the correct awards into the system?

[malraux]

40 minutes ago, karunamom3 said:

Can awards (belt loops) be recognized retroactively in our Council's system?

We, meaning the new leaders, recently found out that the old leaders were not giving credit for all of the boys achievements. The boy would get the belt loop for an elective, but it would not be entered into our Council's computer system (and I supposethat means National too?).

What they were doing was taking each ranks book and entering in the required electives and entering the number of electives required by randomly choosing an elective from the book. Ugh. Our boys complete many more electives than the few required. 

As new CM can I add in all of the correct awards into the system?

I'm pretty sure that within scout book you can. (and I think that internet advancement would also let you do so). When I was converting my pack's records to scout book, I had to add a bunch of missed things, like bobcat awards, to get everything correct. The system let me add bobcat for previous years.

 

That said, does it matter?

[qwazse]

You have the classic IT upgrade problem. There may be volumes of data in one storage format (i.e., handbooks), but only some of it adds value to your workflow by being in a different format (e.g., wall-charts, electronic databases, etc ...).

Yes, you should be able to retroactively enter awards. (Lots of folks, like my troop, have yet to sync up with SB, so they will likely be doing this in the near future.) You just need to ask yourself how doing so will help your pack going forward. Are the boys really upset that they don't have a diving weight's worth of belt loops to slow them down?

[The Latin Scot]

I would caution against it if it's been longer than 6 months. If you try to go back and start awarding all the awards boys have missed out on over too long a period, you risk devaluing them. 

I suggest, if you must repair the damage done in this way, that you only award a few token awards from within the past few months - say, 2 or 3 adventure loops TOPS per boy - and instead focus either on earning new awards, or on repeating the requirements to re-earn awards they may indeed have earned long ago but never received - repetition is after all a valuable learning tool, and this time you can connect the effort of earning the award with the award itself, giving them value beyond simply being bling to show off. But if you jump on it too quickly and suddenly present a boy with 5, 6, 7 awards he earned half a year ago, all he sees is that you are suddenly presenting him with a lot of metal shiny things, and he may start to think that's what Scouting is about. It isn't.

Unlike in Boy Scouts, Cub Scout awards are not essential to advancement, especially considering all the concern you mention is regarding purely elective awards. They are nice, but they don't matter if they aren't connected to the work and learning that went into their acquiring. After a few months, that window is gone, and your just giving them stuff. That's why official BSA policy is that no boy should have to wait longer than two weeks(!) to receive an award he has earned. 

So don't worry as much about looking back as you should be with looking forward. Work with your leaders, set new goals with new plans to record and award advancement items, and you'll fix far more than giving the boys a few metal trinkets ever will. Good luck!

 

Edited September 6, 2018 by The Latin Scot

[Thunderbird]

If I understand your question correctly, Cub Scouts were presented with belt loops, but not everything was added to the BSA's electronic database (Internet Advancement or Scoutbook)?  If that's the case, then you can enter these awards in as historical data.