100% you do not need to record staff meetings 
We are working on informed consent at the moment as a possible avenue to eliminate the need for consent forms.
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My region has an avenue already and isnât expecting them for basic, one-day activities. Uncommonly sensible for them!
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Iâve had parents comment about the number of consent forms they have to sign, often within days of each of them for squadron activities. We always worked on informed consent for decades and never caused any problems.
@pEp the frustrating thing for approvals is wrt to local parades, collecting, fetes, socials, trips etc and as I said, those who have qualifications which were supposed to mean no need for approval as long as it was within the remit of the qualification. The fact that HQAC doesnât trust the people it allows to be staff in its organisation speaks volumes about HQAC and poor staff process, rather than people who may go off piste.
Violent agreementâŚwait, what??
I think you will find that is an MOD requirement for events in JSP 814. You are barking at the wrong set of bosses.
To a point I agree, but itâs always good practice to have someone else qualified look over your plan regardless of how qualified you are.
Some of the Corps AT instructors either volunteer or permanent staff will still run their plans by people, it just makes sense.
And anyway, slowly slowly catchy monkey. Letâs start here and we can then aim higher
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Indeed, we need to prove that we as OCâs can reliably self authorise low risk to life activities before anything is expanded.
That being said I would hope to see a relaxation of AT sign off at some point, certainly expeditions in Lowland Terrain shouldnât be seen as high risk to life.
As an organisation we have more injuries in sport than we have in AT.
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You donât prove that by some BS online nonsense but by looking at what youâve set up over time. If youâve been doing things and ticking their boxes, job jobbed.
So you donât prove it online, except you do prove it by ticking boxes online?
Are you deliberately obtuse and contrary or does it come naturally to you? Arguing with yourself is quite the trolling, well done.
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Absolutely. Especially when you consider some of the other activities which are already in the low-risk category.
You will have proved it by doing it, like a practical assessment. If youâve got the experience of doing these for x years then doing some online course this proves nothing other than the ability to activate the âstartâ, ânextâ and âfinishedâ icons.
Sorry but I am trying to find mt acto 10 course on ultilearn but the system cannot find anything with ACTO in the title, anyone out there can help please?
The term âinformed consentâ is a wide one, do you send to the person signing consent a copy of the risk asessment so that they may raise any concern of what is written, and what the activity proposed entails.
In medical terms âinformed consentâ is a question of risks and benifits which must be explained. What if you have a signee, who is unable to grasp the nature of the consent due to physical, language or intellectual capabilities?
Itâs under the âRAFAC Coursesâ folder:
Generally I would say that you would need to give someone the whole risk assessment, but if you have something thatâs high risk or which is different to what they might expectI would suggest that it needs to be brought to their attention. As an example when Iâm getting consent for DofE Expeditions I will usually highlight walking on roads, use of cookers, Limeâs Disease (where relevant) and I will also explain remote supervision. There are lots of other risks involved but these are the ones that are most likely to occur and which are most likely to have the worst consequences.
Personally I donât like the risk assessment system we use as its too arbitrary, I would rather have one that looks at threat risk and harm and then makes a decision.
Iâve long banged on about that.
Where even the MOD have a clear matrix to determine risk we have an arbitrary âIs the risk acceptable?â box. Madness.
I tried to explain all this to our Region H&S officer⌠Nobody writes an RA with the expectation of failing it. Thus everyone is biased towards answering âYesâ and since we give them no criteria within which to make a judgement âyesâ is the answer we always get (excluding those people who donât understand the difference between âexisting controlsâ and âfurther controlsâ).
I even pointed out that the MOD RA form has the matrix on the back! - Green = go for it; Yellow = Look again to see if further controls are needed; Red = No go.
Why the hell donât we do the same? Itâd be so simple to adopt MOD Form 5010a for our RAs, or even just to pinch the matrix and stick in our own form.
He misunderstood entirely what I was getting at. 
Iâve sat through RA courses at both Wing and Region level and in neither did anyone properly explain the concept or the thought required to make that yes/no judgement.
Donât get me started on further controls, Iâve had an RA rejected previously because âthey should be in your existing controls, you shouldnât need further controls if youâve done it right in the first placeâ
We are being expected to use a form that was designed for a manual process that maybe worked decades ago. Nobody writes risk assessments like that any more.
One thing the current form does not do is assess risk. The paperwork used by Total Safety is far better and it astounds me that we have not moved in that direction already.
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Iâve been writing RAs at work since the late 80s and the ones I do and have done for cadets I use the matrix we were given by the H&S manager back then, where you assess severity and likelihood to give an initial rating : low, medium, high and unacceptable (never had one of these). If itâs medium, high or unacceptable we look to why and put some checks in. Weâve never put further controls in as a separate thing, just update it. I donât have any on any ATC ones as theyâre pointless. Iâve seen them on some ATC ones and asked why and when they say well the box is there and they expect them. Iâve said just put it in the controls. Since day one of the ATC playing catch up with RAs, they have been OTT in their approach.