Scout Network

Scout Network
Scout Network section logo
Owner	The Scout Association
Age range	18–25
Country	United Kingdom
Founded	2001
Membership	2,375 or 5,574 including Network members who have an adult role in the Scout Association (2014)
Previous Explorer Scouts
Website www.scouts.org.uk/network

The Scout Network is the fifth and final youth section of The Scout Association in the United Kingdom, catering for those aged between 18 and 25 years. The section was formally introduced in February 2002 alongside Explorer Scouts with both replacing the former Venture Scouts section for fifteen-and-a-half- to twenty-year-olds.

Scout Network was created as a result of the Scout Association's Programme Review that began in 1995. Throughout the 1990s, the Scout Association had been losing 30,000 members each year and so a new programme was developed to be implemented in the new millennium.

The new section was launched in February 2002 with all Venture Scout Units switching to the new system by December 2003. The section originally formed part of the Scout County, with responsibility for the Network coming from there, and its members were every member of The Scout Association in the section's age range of 18 to 25 years. The Network would therefore include normal youth members as well as leaders, skills instructors and members of the Scout Fellowship, providing a social base for all members of that age, although no meeting was mandatory. The revised age ranges were chosen to ensure that the Explorer Scout section received a suitable number of members and to align both sections with the age ranges of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award. All meetings were to be led by the Network itself. Because members could come from and take part in several different parts of Scouting, the uniform chosen was the same as that used by adult Leaders and members of the Scout Fellowship (now Scout Active Support) with the addition of a Scout Network identifying badge.

One of the early problems suffered by the Scout Network involved the transition from a four section to a five section system, with many of the existing Venture Scout Units changing into Explorer Scouts leaving the Scout Network initially without support. Scout Network has consistently experienced significantly lower levels of membership when compared to the rest of the movement. As a result, a review was undertaken over eighteen months between starting in mid-2004. The outcome of this review led to the introduction of Scout Network Leaders to help administer and guide the Network, additional local Networks rather than a single County Network and the introduction of a District Scout Network.