Full Disclosure: How to Get Parents to Give You the Info You Really Need
Lessons from 20 years of running safe DofE expeditions
“We didn’t mention his diabetes because he’s good at managing it.”
Sometimes, parents can leave you “flying blind” on a DofE expedition or other trip. Over twenty years of running DofE expeditions, we’ve refined and refined our approach to extracting the information we need to keep young people safe, to the point where we feel we have some practices worth sharing.
You can see the approach in practice by filling in the dummy consent form below but read on for the thinking behind it and how you can apply it to your own information-gathering.
Closed prompts before open requests
The more prompts you have, the more likely you are to get a true and accurate picture. Of course, you’re always going to need to have an “anything else” option, but if you have a long list of options people can tick, they’re more likely to make a full disclosure. You don’t need to be an English teacher to know how reluctant some people are to write, but once you’ve got someone to tick a box they are on the hook to give further details as needed.
Our main checklist has 18 prompts:
Have they in the last 5 years had any of these conditions? / Please tick any neurodivergences you think apply even if a formal diagnosis has not yet been obtained.
Asthma/shortness of breath
Diabetes
Epilepsy, convulsions, fits or blackouts
Anxiety
Other mental health issue
Back problems
Problems with feet, knees or legs
Blood pressure/ heart problems
Any other medical condition requiring a doctor’s care
Autism
PDA
ADHD
Other special educational need or neurodivergence
Are they currently undergoing any medical investigations or suffering from any currently undiagnosed symptoms?
Do they take any medicines regularly?
Have they ever been admitted to hospital or suffered any major accident or illness?
Anything else we should know about – please be open as it helps us help them.
Notice that they are not alphabetical because that would encourage skipping past to something the parent intends to tick, and that the most common causes of emergencies are at the top. We invite disclosure of undiagnosed neurodivergences because of the long waiting lists in some areas.
Only “none” means “none”
The final box in that list is “none of the above”. There’s an important psychological difference between just leaving something blank and actively writing, “none”. The same people who will leave a blank if they think it doesn’t matter will disclose something rather than write “none” when they know that’s not strictly true. So for each category – medical conditions or learning differences, allergies, medications, dietary, it’s crucial that you require a positive statement of “none of the above” or “none”.
Ask now all the questions you will need to ask
This sounds obvious, but since the disclosure of an allergy is going to require you to follow up with a phone call to see if they need to carry EpiPens, and how many, you may as well ask on the form and save the phone call. This is our wording:
Please list any allergies (e.g. nuts/plasters/penicillin or other drugs) or write "none". For each allergy, please write any medication they should take if they have a reaction, or write "no meds". For example, "Nuts - two EpiPens"
Be explicit about what you don’t want
Parents are almost always doing what they think is best for their child; but that might not be the case on a DofE expedition or other trip. This is the wording we use to try to pre-empt any inadvertent, or well-intentioned but risky withholding of information:
Please answer all questions. Full responses help us to look after your child. If you tick any of the boxes, please give us more details
Please include any long-term conditions such as asthma or diabetes, even if they are currently well-managed and cause no problems.
Please don't withhold relevant information because you want us to see your child with fresh eyes. Our instructors treat young people as individuals and they can build better relationships when they're fully informed.
Only too much is enough
When we were told that a participant had been hospitalized for a twisted testicle at the age of four, I felt the form was doing its job! You ought to be in the position of having to edit out information that is surplus to requirements, rather than seeking information that the form has not yielded.
Old information is no information
The gap between a form being filled in and when a trip goes out can often be several months. That’s the limit of when you can consider information to be current. For example, when asking for the back-up contact details of a second adult, we state:
This is the back-up contact we will ring if the main contact doesn't answer. If either contact is going to be away for one of the expeditions, please send us an additional contact for that expedition so that we always have two.
If you’re collecting information many months in advance, people will just not know if someone is going to be away. So your timeline may work better if you have an initial consent/deposit communication and a second information/balance communication. This also lowers the friction to signing up, and anything you can do on that front helps your trip become more inclusive.
If there is a significant gap between your expeditions (for example, as with some schools Year 11 Silvers, practice in autumn, qualifying in summer) then you should require fresh consent ahead of the qualifying expedition. It will take a parent ten boring minutes, but you are taking their offspring off their hands for a whole weekend so it’s still a good deal!
But we already collect information from parents for all our pupils?
If you know you don’t know, you find out before you go; if you think you know but you don’t, you find out when something goes wrong. The information already held on school databases can create a false sense of security. The closest we have come to a life-threatening incident is an occasion when we had agreed to run a school’s qualifying expedition so that young people could complete their award. A participant had a serious asthma attack – there was nothing on the school’s paperwork – and time was bought by an inhaler carried by the instructor (under the principle of necessity) until the ambulance arrived. When providing information to the school, the parents had thought they didn’t need to mention it as the boy in question had not had an attack for some time. But he was still under a doctor’s care, and under the unfamiliar exertions of an expedition had a severe attack.
Since then, we have always insisted on getting direct, fresh information ourselves, using our own processes from parents for each expedition programme – often the school learns something that had previously been undisclosed.
We hope you found that useful, either for improving your procedures or so you can feel reassured that they’re already tickety-boo. Do get in touch with us if you have any questions about running safe, challenging, memorable expeditions, whether you’re continuing with in-house provision or you’re looking to involve an Approved Activity Provider such as us.
Best wishes,
Jason Buckley
Director, Outspark