Dear Parent/carer,

Thank you for your interest in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme West Sussex Virtual Centre.

The Virtual Centre enables young people to take part in the Award who may not get the chance to participate. If you and your young person do not have access to a DofE Centre near you, the Virtual Centre can support your involvement.

How does the Virtual Centre work?

Young people enrolled on DofE will be given an eDofE login. As a parent/carer, you will need to support them to ensure that your young person is logging all the activity they do towards their award on their eDofE. You might manage their account completely and upload all their evidence for them, or they may be able to take responsibility for this, with a little checking-in from you.

Rachel Sadler, our SEND Youth Participation Worker is your ‘Virtual’ DofE Leader. If you have any questions, need a bit of support or want a chat about how it’s going, then Rachel will be available to help! Rachel will also check in with you and your young person regularly through eDofE and phone calls, texts or face to face meetings. Just let us know what works best for you so we can stay in touch. If young people would like to get together to meet up with other young people from the Virtual Centre, we can arrange termly meetings at a youth centre. Young people might then like to stay in touch with each other by phone or Facebook. We will set up a DofE Facebook group which can be overseen by their Leader, Rachel.

How will young people do the Sections of the Award?

DofE is a personalised programme and should be about what fits your young person’s interests, skills, needs and talents. They can choose what they would like to do. They may already be doing something which can count towards their DofE, for example helping out at Guides or going to a football club after school. If you’re not sure if what they are doing meets the requirements of DofE, please do get in touch and we’ll advise you.

If you’re having difficulty finding opportunities for your young person to complete a section, please do let us know.

Perhaps the most challenging part of the Award to complete independently is the Expedition. We are planning to support a group of Virtual Centre young people to get together to do their Expedition. This might be through an expedition we organise ‘in-house’, or through an approved outdoor activities provider.

How do they get started?

Please complete the attached form and return it to Rachel Sadler using the contact details on this letter. If you would like Rachel to give you a call or face to face home visit before deciding whether to enrol, please do get in touch. We have access to funding for young people with SEND to take part in the Award; please give as much detail as you can about your young person’s needs to enable us to assess whether they are eligible for a free place.

PLEASE NOTE: It is also important when completing their details on eDofE, that you declare your young person’s disability or SEN. If you do not, they will not be eligible for a free place.

Your young person will be sent their login details for eDofE (our online record system) and a Welcome Pack which contains five elements:

  • Participant's Handbook
  • Assessor Guidance booklet
  • Welcome letter
  • Their DofE Reward Card[External link].

The Assessor Guidance Cards for each section are for them to give to their Assessor to provide them with information on what’s required of them in their role.

The DofE Reward Card gives them 15% off purchases from Cotswold Outdoor, the outdoor equipment retailer, in stores or online.

Using eDofE, participants have to prove what they’ve done for each of their sectional activities. They can upload their pictures on to eDofE and scan and upload pages of their signed Assessor Cards as well as pictures of them doing their activities, signed notes from their Assessor, movies... anything they can think of to prove their hard work!

When they complete their programme, they will have the opportunity to create their Achievement Pack containing photographs and words from what they upload, for them to treasure, so the more high quality items they upload, the better!

Their Leader (at the Virtual Centre) will then sign off each section in eDofE as and when they have proved their commitment to their activities for the necessary time period. The Licensed Organisation (West Sussex County Council Young People’s Service) will approve their final Award.

You can find out more information about the Award at:

We hope to welcome you and your young person to the West Sussex Virtual Centre soon.

Kind Regards

The West Sussex DofE Team, West Sussex County Council Young People’s Service

Contact details for SEND Virtual Centre

Rachel Sadler, SEND Youth Participation Worker

Young Peoples Service

Point 140, Centenary House

Durrington Lane

West Sussex, BN13 2QB

Tel: 07734000401

Email: