Youth Permission Slip: Fill & Download for Free

Long ago and far away, I had a GF with two daughters, 11 and 13.I got along really well with the kids. I let them put makeup on me and cut my hair (I had hair in those days) and helped with costumes for little plays they put on.A sleepover had been planned for a holiday weekend. Permission slips obtained, phone numbers of parents, allergies, etc.My GF’s grandmother died in Kingston about a week before the event and the girls were devastated. She was going to call it off as she had to attend the funeral.I volunteered to be the host.It took a bit of convincing, but she agreed.I went with her to personally meet ALL the parents, so they could assess me and judge.It was a pool party and sleepover and I provided my Red Cross life-saving certificate and my St John’s Ambulance trauma training certificate. I was CPR certified.One parent was a cop and he said he would like to run me through the system and I gave him all my personal details and a couple of personal references, one of which was a county court judge.I was asked about rules. No boys, no booze, no bad behaviour, no bikinis and full pyjamas. 11 pm call to their homes. Any transgression and their parents would be asked to pick them up.One family declined, but later relented. I agreed to not smoke for the duration.Twelve girls for roughly 30 hours.They were absolute angels and all of us had fun. The family room had five inflatable mattresses with tons of blankets and pillows. I watched TV in the living room.While they swam I was dressed in a ’20s lifeguard outfit with a pith helmet and an oversized whistle. I bought six disposable cameras for them to share.The two Jewish girls made me promise I wouldn’t tell about them eating hotdogs.Roughly noon, parents came to retrieve their kids.Consequences: three of the girls wanted me to host their birthday parties. They all wanted another pool/sleepover in August. I got a job offer from one guy to work at a youth centre. Told him I hated kids. What I did was a favour for two kids and a lady I cared about, not a calling. Of course, I did none of that and the GF and I parted ways just after Xmas that year.This was all long before the insidious curse of mobile phones. Had they been around in those days I would not even have suggested being in the same house as twelve girls.It wasn’t perfect. One vomit, one sunburn, one bed-wetter. My GF’s kids dealt with the latter.Fourteen years later one of the girls saw me at the food court in the Eaton Centre and she thanked me for a fun memory. I didn’t remember her, but I recalled the event.I try to live by the KISS method: Keep It Simple, Stupid. When you over-think, over-analyse and over-complicate things, it becomes a nightmare for all involved.

I’ve really been hit by the realization that I’m not young anymore this year. I’ve gone back to school and I’m taking first year college courses with undergrads. Early on in the semester we were asked to complete some surveys and the lecturer said that they didn’t want the extra bother of having minors fill out parental permission slips in order to fill out the survey it would only be open to people 18 or older. I remember sitting in the lecturer theatre and looking around at all the people and thinking “There are people here who are still legally children, 16 or 17 years old…if I had been a teenage mother they could be my kids…” the thought still freaks me out.Also, this year I’ve had people call me “ma’am”. That never happened before.

Based on the details provided, it’s hard to give you a better answer than this:The BSA does not require “permission slips” for most activities like a weekend campout. They require health forms, Youth Protection training for registered leaders, and have the Guide to Safe Scouting as a reference for how to safely provide an outdoor experience like a campout. They do not require permission slips just to participate as a registered scout for most activities.Thus, in general, there are few instances where I can see not having the permission slip at a campsite being a problem. If the scouts are doing a particular activity where an outside service provider requires a permission slip, like going on a campout that includes going rock climbing at a privately run rock climbing facility that requires permission slips, then in all likelihood the scout without such a permission slip could not participate in the activity. Of course they could still be on the campout in general, just no climbing for them. That’s the climbing facility’s call, based on their rules.If the Troop has decided that they want a permission slip from the parents for the scout to participate in a particular event, that is within their rights, but the BSA has no guidelines for units that add such extra paperwork and how it is to be enforced. Without being glib, the BSA has their very specific rules and guidelines for how to safely participate in a wide variety of activities, and as long long as those are followed the BSA will never give you grief. They will provide insurance for those participating in BSA activities that comply with all of their requirements, but permission slips are not usually one of those requirements unless you are talking about SPECIFIC activities that are more arduous and/or more dangerous, such as going Backpacking at one of their High Adventure Bases like Philmont or going to the National Jamboree.To not totally side step your question, most troops have a fairly detailed policy on what happens if a scout is not compliant with the safety requirements for any event, which includes leaving contact numbers for contacting the parents. I would be on the phone right away if a scout was on an activity without the required equipment or paperwork. If the parent decides to be unreachable, we, as the responsible leaders would have to ensure the scout was safe, and go from there. There are too many unknowns to provide a more detailed answer. Lastly, yes, that has sometimes meant in extreme circumstances that we have had to have two adults drive the scout home, or wait with the scout until the parents arrived to take them home.Like all good scouts, the parents should “be prepared” as well.