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We’ve updated how we welcome young people and their families to the DofE, so they’re inspired and excited from the first moment they hear our name.

We’ve reduced the amount of printed materials they’re given, finding new ways to bring the DofE to life for them at the start of their journey — and giving them better digital support throughout their programme.

As part of this, we’ve updated and condensed the Welcome Pack participants receive when they begin their DofE — and we now send it directly to their homes.

There is ‘doing your DofE’ information, Assessors’ Cards, a leaflet for parents and carers, and information on discounts and offers. The pack is different for each level, with relevant programme information and personalised DofE Cards. Due to recent updates, Welcome packs will arrive separately to DofE Cards, read the FAQs in full here.

We send packs directly to participants’ homes when they register their address on their eDofE profile — sending information straight to their door without Leaders having to worry about it.

For operational reasons, Leaders will continue to distribute Welcome Packs to participants who live in Northern Ireland, or who are doing their DofE in the secure estate. For participants who have an overseas home address, packs will be sent to their DofE centre, addressed to the participant.

DofE Managers told us they’d like some support when recruiting and welcoming DofE participants, and their parents and carers. They also asked for more ‘plug and play’ materials for group presentations and for fewer administrative requirements during the welcome stage.

We want as many young people as possible to be able to do their DofE — but we don’t want that to mean more work for our Managers, Leaders and other volunteers.

We hope this new direct approach will help motivate, excite and engage participants, parents and carers from the start, while removing the need for Leaders to manage and distribute Welcome Packs.

From 1 September 2019, all new participants who’ve registered their home address on eDofE receive an updated Pack directly.

If you still have current versions of the Welcome Pack, please feel free to continue to hand them out to new participants until you run out.

You will not be notified when participants are sent their Welcome Packs, but — as long as they enter a correct home address, with correct postcode in capitals — they’ll receive the pack within a couple of weeks.

We’ll introduce an address look-up facility to eDofE that will find the postcode when a participant enters the rest of their home address.

It may take up to 21 days from when a participant enters their address on eDofE for their Welcome Pack to arrive. If their pack hasn’t arrived after this time, the participant or their Leader should email [email protected].

If the participant’s pack has been returned to us, we’ll resend it to their DofE centre, care of their Leader. If it hasn’t been returned, we will send an un-personalised pack to their centre address.

Yes. When a new Award level is added to a participant’s eDofE profile, this will automatically trigger the delivery of a new pack to their home, containing content specific to their new DofE level.

If you have any questions, please speak to your Operations Officer.

As well as the updated Welcome Pack, we’ve also launched some fantastic new DofE films to help recruit and welcome young people and their families.

We also have the app, which will be available for download from the user’s preferred store. This is a great way to keep young people connected to their DofE programme, letting them plan and manage it on eDofE on the go, on their phone.

Participants with overseas home addresses should still enter their home address into eDofE. Their pack will automatically be delivered to their DofE centre in the UK, but will be addressed to the participant by name. To request a DofE Card, please refer to our FAQs.

There are two reasons why a participant’s personal Welcome Pack might be delivered to their DofE centre so that their Leader can pass it onto them, even if they’ve entered their home address into eDofE.

First – if a participant’s pack has been returned to us as undeliverable, we’ll resend it to their DofE centre, care of their Leader.

Second – if our automated system can’t find a match for the postcode that the participant has entered into eDofE, their Welcome Pack will be addressed and delivered to their DofE centre instead.

We’ve set up this feature to make sure Welcome Packs make it to participants, and to prevent them going missing or being returned to the DofE. An unmatched postcode will automatically trigger delivery to the centre, rather than a home address, even if the rest of the address has been entered correctly.

There are a number of reasons why this might happen:
– A participant has entered an incorrect postcode – for example, by accidentally including a punctuation mark or a zero instead of an ‘O’.
– The postcode belongs to a new build property that hasn’t yet been added to the Royal Mail database.
– Our postcode data is refreshed periodically, so there may be occasions when a postcode is in the Royal Mail database, but hasn’t yet made it into ours.