[Paddlewise] large club safety oversight function

Large Club Safety Oversight Function

The discussion concerning waivers, the discussion concerning group
dynamics, and the rapid growth in popularity in paddling have got me
scratching my head over how clubs can improve the safety of their
trips.  I thought I might take a look at the old chestnut of trip
organizers v. trip leaders in large clubs.  A review of the problem
large clubs are having in this area has led me to the conclusion that
large clubs should consider having a person or committee in an oversight
role with the function of  looking at safety throughout the club and its
activities.

For trips which are composed entirely of experienced paddlers, there is
seldom a need for a defined leader.  Open communication and consensual
decisions help draw on a broad range of experience.  When need for a
leader arises, e.g. when co-ordinating a rescue, a group of experienced
paddlers should smoothly transform into the leader-team model.  At the
other end of the scale, obviously beginner groups or groups with a fair
percentage of beginners require a leader.

A problem can arise when there are one or more inexperienced or immature
people on a trip, which is common for trips run by large clubs.  For the
occasional inexperienced person, a buddy system works nicely, but the
entire group must be supportive so that you don't end up with friction.
The problem of an immature person is much more difficult (e.g. someone
who persistently heads off on their own, or takes risks that the rest of
the group finds unacceptable).  Obviously the rational solution as far
as safety goes is to toss them from the trip as soon as possible if they
do not respond positively to counselling, and to black list them from
future trips, but this is often socially difficult.  I don't have a
clean solution, but I suggest that taking care in deciding who will join
a trip is a good start (and then hold fast against cling-ons who tend to
turn up at the put-in and expect to tag along even though they were not
invited).  For example, if a person has a reputation for straying, place
them on trips where (a) even if they stray they will not get into much
trouble (e.g. tightly controlled beginner trips only), and (b) assign
them as a buddy to a person whom you know will not stray, and see if
they will take their responsibility to an individual more seriously than
their responsibility to the group.  The next step is to hold both pre-
and post-trip briefings.  Lay out everything ahead of time, including
what is expected of every participant, and then at lunch, at the end of
the day, and at the end of the trip, compare what happened (both good
and bad) against what was planned, and discuss how each member succeeded
or failed in their tasks and obligations.  If you get in the habit of
doing this, you will find less hostility than if you let matters fester
and then suddenly jump out and criticize someone.  You will also
forestall the commonly used "better hindsight than foresight" rebuttal
which is often used by negligent paddlers when they are criticized after
messing up.  Hopefully this will help prevent serious problems, relieve
friction, and still provide an opportunity for immature paddlers to
learn how they can develop into more responsible paddlers.  I've found
than in about three decades of paddling, I have only encountered three
people who eventually did not come around, and with whom I simply have
to avoid paddling.

This leads directly into the old problem of whether a club should have
trip co-ordinators or trip leaders (a topic which was touched upon
several times during the waiver discussion, but which was not closely
examined).  I'd like to use the Wilderness Canoe Association (WCA) as an
example.  The club started with a small number of experienced paddlers,
but in the last decade has had very strong growth (I think they are now
at about 700 memberships or so, and given that a membership usually
includes a couple or a family, the overall membership is probably about
1,500 people).  The odd thing is that the number of local trips listed
in the newsletter has not increased as rapidly as the membership.  Of
even more interest is that a greater proportion of these local trips are
now instructional oriented.

The WCA has always maintained that the people who run the local trips
are trip organizers only, and unless otherwise specified are not trip
leaders.  To quote from 1979 newsletter:  "We remind you that our trip
organizers are just that -- ORGANIZERS -- not outfitters, guides or
instructors, but fellow members who have volunteered to put together a
trip and share the experience with you.  Participants are responsible
for their own transportation, equipment, and safety while on the trip."
Since trip organizers are not trip leaders, there has been little
relatively little concern over the leadership ability of the organizers.

How does this policy fit with the reality of most local trips having
paddlers of a variety of skill, experience and maturity levels, the
growth in the relative number of new paddlers who need guidance whether
they realize it or not, and the need to perform rigorous risk analysis
and group briefings?  Quite simply, it is forcing the organizers into
more leadership oriented roles.  The policy does not match the reality.
This dichotomy has contributed to a lack of consistency, where some
organizers take on a leadership role in their local trips, while others
do not.  This has led to new members being unsure of what is expected of
them and what they can expect from the trip organizers.  It has
contributed to the tripping committee not rigorously ensuring that only
competent leaders are permitted to organize trips.  It has led to trip
organizers occasionally finding themselves in the position of having a
leadership role forced upon them due to the on-water exigencies.  It has
led to trip organizers who prefer to take a leadership role to back away
from offering local trips because they find that due to prior club
practices their task is similar to herding cats.  The bottom line is
that the safety practices are slipping.  (For those WCA members who
disagree with this, I suggest that you take a look at who is offering
what sort of trips, and note that several wild water trips are being
offered by a person who does not believe that women are capable of front
ferries, who routinely dumps in class I, and who has verbally abused
several members on several trips.  Enough said.)

All in all, I would suggest that the club needs to recognize that each
trip needs to have a leader, and that responsibilities and expectations
of both leaders and participants should be clearly set out and discussed
prior to a trip being offered in the newsletter, and again prior to the
start of a trip.  I also suggest internal technical and leadership
workshops, promotion of external formal certification and professional
development, and close vetting and regular reviewing of all leaders.  To
do this will require a shift in the mindset of the club, and given the
ongoing efforts of the tripping committee, I believe that this shift is
already underway.  For the WCA, and for any large club with a
significant number of new paddlers, I suggest that it is no longer
possible to have trip organizers but not have competent trip leaders
without compromising safety.

I realize that the road to providing competent leaders in a volunteer
club is fraught with obstacles, ranging from promoting a hero-badge
culture to discouraging competent, non-professional paddlers.  For
examples of these sorts of problems, I would like to look at the London
Canoe Club (LCC).  Similar to the WCA, the LCC has experienced strong
growth over the last few years, but unlike the WCA, it has embraced the
Ontario Recreational Canoeing Association's (ORCA) certification (BTW,
the WCA and ORCA began with many of the the same people, but broke into
separate organizations primarily over matters such as these:  the WCA
was more into paddling, whereas ORCA was more into instruction).  The
LCC's shift toward requiring ORCA certified instructors and trip leaders
has been fraught with difficulty, for the club has made some very
arbitrary decisions which have discouraged competent instructors and
trip leaders.  Folks who have been very competent volunteer trip leaders
for the last ten or more years have been forced to become certified (a
several hundred dollar expense) or to stop leading trips because there
has been no grand fathering clause (this was a contributing factor in
the club president leaving office).  Folks who are already both highly
experienced and certified in other disciplines such as sprint or wild
water have been marginalized and precluded from offering basic paddling
instruction because they are not ORCA certified (additionally, and
perhaps tangential to the certification issue, a national team sprinter
was not allowed to paddle a sprint boat, and an OWWA instructor was
dissuaded from holding a series of wild water clinics).  Two of the more
vocal ORCA instructors who have pushed most strongly to promote ORCA
instruction could not paddle their way out of a paper bag (one received
his certification before the standards were very high -- he thinks that
the Ottawa is a deadly river but does not insist on his students wearing
wet suit or dry suits in spring wild water, and the other is an
inexperienced paddler who recently earned his Junior Instructor badge
but has yet to master the forward stroke).  Most importantly, the Board
has not kept track of what the instructors are up to, which directly led
to the wiping out of a trip on the Spanish last summer (no serious
injuries -- they just lost a couple of  boats) when the club designated
leader dropped out immediately prior to the trip without either
arranging for a replacement or cancelling the trip.  Quite simply, the
LCC has had the best of intentions in trying to improve the quality of
its trip leaders, but has fallen into the hero-badge trap.  The emphasis
is on who has what ORCA level, rather than who can do a safe, solid
job.  Too much faith is being put in the paper qualifications, and too
little thought is being given to what is actually being delivered to the
membership.  The LCC is assuming that in requiring ORCA certification,
it has met its safety responsibilities, which could not be further from
the truth, for requiring qualified leaders is just the beginning of a
club's responsibilities.

Please don't get the impression that I'm not supportive of ORCA.  I
think they are a terrific organization.  They have made great inroads in
promoting paddling safety in the province.  I am a member of ORCA and I
have been a director of ORCA.  While I support the promotion of formally
qualified leaders, and consider it negligent to lead a trip without
appropriate rescue, CPR, first aid, survival and paddling training and
experience, I suggest that a club should not look at a certification
program as a global solution to its safety needs. Putting blind faith in
a certification program is a logical fallacy:  argument ad auctoritas.
Yes, if I had to make a choice based on knowing only that a person were
certified or not, I would go with the certification, but clubs are not
faced with such limited data.  They need to closely examine their needs
and then look at what resources are available.  I suggest that a club
should look behind the hero-badge, and closely examine what they are
getting in a leader.  What skills does the leader have?  What experience
does the leader have?  How well does the leader perform when running a
trip?  In what types of activities is the leader competent to lead?
These are just a few of the many questions which should be answered.  I
suggest that a club should not delegate its responsibility when
selecting leaders.  The club should be the first and last authority on
who is qualified to lead, and should set its own standards based on its
own needs.  If the club decides that an ORCA certification program, or
OWWA certification program, or OWWA certification program is required,
then it must recognize that it still has the ultimate responsibility to
decide who is competent to lead in what circumstances.  The club must
not pass off this responsibility, for if it does so, it will sacrifice
safety for hero-badges.

So now we have looked at two examples of large clubs which have
experienced significant growth.  One, the WCA, has run into difficulty
because it has avoided recognizing the need for trip leaders rather than
organizers.  The other, the LCC, has run into difficulty because in its
wish to provide competent leaders, it has fallen into the hero-badge
trap.  What is common to both is that neither club has done a very good
job at looking at specific safety concerns, and in taking responsibility
as a club for the safe running of trips.  I suggest that both outfits
would do well to take a close look at what is actually occurring on
their trips, and try to step away from dogma in their analyses.

I wonder large clubs, should have active safety committees, whose
oversight role should be to poke into all aspects of the club
(particularly on-water activities), collect data, and make
recommendations?  For example, the WCA organizational structure is
broken into a general six person board of directors including a chair,
and non-board positions for secretary, treasurer, membership records,
public information, tripping and journal.  The LCC organizational
structure is broken into a task based twelve person board of directors,
including president, vice-president, membership, treasurer, secretary,
tripping, marathon training, boathouse staffing, newsletter, and
lessons, and non-board positions for maintenance, high-school
instruction, sprint racing, dragon boat racing, and kayak instruction.
I find it curious that neither club assigns a person or committee to
look solely at safety.  It seems that every need under the sun, from
staffing public information booths to swabbing the toilets, is assigned
resources, but safety is not.  I realize that safety should be, and
usually is, an important factor in any given decision by any person
holding a responsible position with a large club, but is this enough?
Would a safety officer or committee help move a club as a whole to
assuming responsibility for the safety of the activities its sponsors?
Would it help a club avoid the problems the WCA and the LCC are facing?
If it would be helpful, how best would it be implemented to avoid
creating another layer of bureaucracy in a large club?

Richard Culpeper
www.geocities.com/~culpeper



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