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YPT version 2 Published (UPDATED)

Posted on February 7, 2018 Updated on February 9, 2018

UPDATE #2 (2/9/18, 9:50 AM): I have received more information from the Crossroads of America Council Training Director Jay Soucy, via Director of Field Service for Central Section Ken Ruppel. This information is posted in a newer article.

National Council has published a new version of Youth Protection Training.

Initial reviews of ease-of-use have been less than favorable. So, remembering the Scout Law is going to be important for the first few weeks.

Initial indications are that this update has several significant changes:

1. A requirement all scouters update their YPT by October 1, 2018, regardless of their current expiration date.
2. No scout, venturer, or explorer will be allowed to tent with another youth of greater than 2 years age difference or maturity. This is due to FBI statistics that show that youth abuse other youth of large age disparity.
3. Co-ed rules from venturing have been incorporated across the entire program.

There is probably more, but I have not taken it, so I cannot confirm.

The MyScouting app has been updated to allow this training to be taken on your mobile device.

The system will also use the ScoutingU education interface from Taleo.net, so expect a navigation problem.

More details as they become available.

UPDATE 2/7/18 at 4:00 pm:

I am working through the new modules. The YPT2, as they are calling it online, consists of four modules on Taleo.net, the host website for ScoutingU.

The first module is an overview of why preventing abuse is important and the concepts of Youth Protection. It is very well done and a bit disturbing but it really has more adult maturity to it than the old YPT ever did. I had no real technical problems. I had to learn to advance the slides or submoduals using the forward skip button. This means that it is harder to let the video play and ignore it if you hope to get done any time in the 21st century.

The second module is about sexual abuse and grooming. The content is much more similar to the old YPT. I had many technical problems. I started on a Safari browser on my Mac. When it locked up during the scenarios, I moved to Google Chrome for Mac. It eventually allowed me to move forward, but the scenarios submoduals never did work correctly. I have little confidence that the browser choice had any effect.

The third module is about bullying. It talks about verbal, social, and physical bullying. It describes cyberbullying as a subcategory of social bullying.

The fourth module is the YPT certification test. The questions are very straightforward. They only have a few that have tricky turns of phrase. If you read moderately carefully, you will have a reasonable chance of passing.

Initiallly, my completed training did not populate my “Youth Protection Training Cert.” on the My Dashboard:My Training:YPT page on my.scouting.org. That may be a technical glitch. The training was showing as 100% Complete on Taleo.net/ScoutingU.

Overall, I would say the content is a vast improvement over the old courses. There are new procedures in place that make compliance much easier. The most profound change is the implementation of a Scout First Help Line at (844)SCOUTS-1. This national toll-free number is designed to help put counseling and reporting to the BSA in one place. It is designed to answer questions, too. Put this phone number on the top of all your outing worksheets and contact information. Put it in your smartphone.

Surprisingly there is little emphasis on the co-ed aspects of scouting. The new rules sound nearly identical to old Venturing YPT requirements.

There are two courses listed on Taleo.net/ScoutingU. One is “MANDATORY”; the other “RECOMMENDED.” The mandatory one is what I described above. The recommended one does not seem to have any modules yet. I have no idea what this is for. It could be for Cub specific or Scout specific modules. We will see.

I have no additional information about whether the expiration date for training has changed, but I highly recommend taking the new training immediately.