Welcoming parents and carers to guiding

Whether it’s a girl, parent or carer, everyone’s guiding experience should start with a warm welcome.  

It can be a little overwhelming for parents and carers to introduce their child to a new group of people for the first time. That’s why we want to make sure every new parent or carer has the information they need about guiding when their child joins. 

Find out what we send parents and carers when they join so you can plan your unit communications around it.

What you can do as a volunteer 

As a volunteer who’s managing a waiting list and helping to register a child, you’ll already have good communication with parents and carers. By this point, you’ll have given them a warm welcome and kept them updated with their application progress on the waiting list. You also should've already talked to parents about filling in the correct starting form for their child. The best thing you can do is keep them in the loop about your unit’s plans and activities for the guiding term.

You can also make sure you consider every individual child’s needs. For example, if a parent or carer has registered a child with an allergy on GO, it’s a good idea to follow up with them or arrange a meeting to reassure them their child is supported. Knowing you’re there to create a positive experience for their child will make a huge difference to parents. Guiding is all about feeling empowered and included – and everyone should feel comfortable.  

Read more about making reasonable adjustments to your unit. 

What we send parent and carers 

As well as your own contact with parents and carers, they’ll receive some welcome emails after their child’s role is made active in GO. 

• If they opt in to receive marketing communications, they’ll receive all 3 emails below.  
• If they don’t opt in to receive marketing communications, they’ll only receive the first email with our general welcome pack. 

1. Our parent and carer welcome pack  

After a child’s role becomes active in GO, all parents or carers will receive our digital welcome pack.  

We worked closely with volunteers, parents and carers to create a welcome pack that covers exactly what they need to know. It includes: 

• More information about our sections. 
• A bit about our programme, its themes and our badges. 
• How parents and carers can support their child and the volunteers who run their unit. Things like keeping GO updated, helping volunteers and supporting their child to do interest badges. 
• Uniform essentials. 

It gets sent to them via email so it’s important their email address is entered correctly in GO.  

Take a look at the parent and carers welcome pack.  

2. Our uniform welcome pack 

For parents and carers who’ve  opted in to receive marketing communications, they’ll receive our uniform welcome pack 1 week after their child’s role is activated in GO. 

We want to help take the stress out of buying uniform for parents and carers and our handy information pack does just that! It will: 

• Explain our uniform and help parents and carers decide what they can buy. 
• Direct them to the best place to buy the right uniform for their child. 
• Share the badges you can buy as a parent and carer. 

See the parents and carers uniform pack.  

3. Get to know guiding better

For parents and carers who’ve opted in to receive marketing communications, they’ll receive a third email 2 weeks after their child’s role becomes active in GO. It includes: 

• Personalised links to our badge finder depending on what section(s) their child is in. 
• A-Z Girlguiding glossary for parents and carers. 
• The 5 main types of badges at Girlguiding: skills builder badges; interest badges; programme awards and qualifications; adventure badges and fun badges. 
• How girls can earn interest badges at home. 
• Other ways to support their child in guiding like getting involved as a parent or carer and keeping GO updated. 

After parents and carers have got the welcome pack, it’s up to you as volunteers to choose how you keep parents and carers updated with the latest news from their unit. If they’re opted into marketing communications, they’ll also get our monthly parent and carers’ newsletter. We’ll let you know what’s inside beforehand via Girlguiding news, our fortnightly newsletter for volunteers.