Haven’t been to Crowborough for a long while but do they still have a bit of a separate area round the back for officers?
Traditionally it was always an ‘officers’ building and an SNCO building for CFAV. The officers block was up the top by the main car park and the SNCO buildings were down the hill. But I think 80% of the time it was just made up, and you were lucky to get a bed at all. And also lucky to avoid sleeping in the billets.
As a CI I’ve been in all of the above…
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I’ve only not been in the “officers” bit. Sounds like luxury…
The only difference/advantage is that it’s close to the car park, so you don’t have to carry all your stuff down and back up the hill 
Sounds like the nickname the Army would give to the place where they train ‘crows’.
Bold of you to assume I didn’t park on the side of the road and become a nuisance…
The disgusting thing is, crowborough was used for pre deployment isolation during COVID…
Imagine spending two weeks in those blocks unable to socialise…
It would be horrific. Bad enough spending a couple of nights there.
I always found the food decent, though… Often if we got there early on Friday to setup for a weekend Chandra would do steak and chips for dinner before the cadets turned up which was actually superb 
Anyway, CIC alternatives 
It’s supposed to be done as part of the CIC pre-training.
My point was it should be part of CI and chaplain training: not just for those going into uniform.
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Absolutely. And it cements connections to the parent service.
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There may not be to you - but I can assure you, that there is an immense difference to others….
Reading both your comments and those of respondents, I can understand where you’re coming from - but it is still slightly misguided as it upholds the assumption of “they’re volunteers - so what difference does it make what they’re volunteering to do…?”
Lots of comments make reference to people taking leave or using annual holiday - I know that some organisations such as The Police & NHS for example will give you an extra week’s leave to enable voluntary work…
However, if you’re self-employed the chances are that if you’re not working for a client, you’re not earning money.
In my situation, I was self employed, I had a son already heavily involved, with a daughter that was likely to come through.
As a CI, I was already involved with Road Marching - which would take up just over a week for Nijmegen, weekends for Cosford and Lyneham, plus a further 8 days of training walks, plus extra time spent recce’ing routes and putting Apps together.
That was on top of assisting in other activities either at the Sqn or off site, including supporting camps, escorting AEF etc.
I was regularly asked if I would consider moving from CI to uniform…, and each time my answer was no.
Not to make a stance or out of principle, but because I already have enough plates spinning in the air…,
As well as a teenage son doing GCSEs, my daughter was about to start secondary school… my father had dementia, my mother has anxiety and facial neuropathy (meaning she’s literally a bag of nerves 24/7), my MIL has advanced Parkinson’s and my FIL has heart failure.
My wife is also self-employed. By being self-employed we have the ability to be more flexible in our working hours - but this also affects how much we earn - or don’t!
Balancing up time spent away from home or dealing with domestic matters has to be planned far more than someone with a steady salary.
The benefits of a mid-week course are indeed worth bearing in mind - as it enable the FT staff to deliver the training during THEIR working week; and the benefits of entering etc after each day are substantial; I would also argue that for the extended period of contact time with the trainers, the candidates probably have more opportunities to ask pertinent questions - leading to a better understanding…
But…. This sticks with the pattern of running the organisation for the best interests of the existing staff and structure.
The current organisation has already been proven time and again to be failing one way or another across the board.
This is not intended as a slight on the many wonderful CFAVs that make RAFAC what it is - moreover an effort to try and improve the recruitment and training process.
If you want to attract and engage more volunteers then you need to make the process more attractive - if you want to retain and develop those volunteers then you need to value them and THEIR time better.
Personally, I’d say there’s lots of justification to provide the CIC across all three methods:
A week’s residential held either centrally / Regionally
Two weekends held as above
Modular via Teams
(Curiously - how are officers selected and trained for the Overseas Squadrons…?)
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I have no idea of the expectations placed upon RAFAC FTRS personnel, but by way of example, many FTRS roles geared towards supporting RAuxAF units (including the OC post) will frequently say that an expectation of the role is that the post holder will be available for the monthly weekend training period etc for the unit, with TOIL granted accordingly.
If permanent staff involved in providing these training courses were essentially contracted to free-up a weekend per month, that could go a long way to providing extra options as numerous posters have requested.
This isn’t a criticism as I’m not swept-up on actual provision across the organisation, but training should, wherever possible, be delivered in a way that supports the volunteer.
So if a residential week is genuinely required, it should really start or finish with a weekend, thus reducing the weekday impact (or at least that be a regularly-occurring option — choice is the biggest enabler).
While more employers are giving extra leave for the Armed Forces Covenant, many more do not, and so it isnt a safe assumption.
I can speak from experience of how this can go very wrong.
I was all ready to start serving my community as a Special Constable for a weekend per month, then they changed the training programme and revealed it’d run every single weekend over something like 4-6 months, plus Wednesday evenings.
I told them that they were insane and should strongly reconsider how they’ve set the bar to training so high for a role which “only” then demands 2 days per month, but they didn’t seem up for reconsidering.
Even if I dropped everything, I couldn’t see how that training burden was sustainable. Oddly in that case, my suggestion was a reserve-like approach with a couple of 2-week intensive periods because booking that leave would be so much easier than not seeing the family for 4-6 months. Not to mention not having a day off!
The point is, they lost someone who’d already done so much work to get in. I keep on the books and wait for them to realise it’s a terrible basic training programme, but we’ll see…
We’re clearly significantly better than that!
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Even if you are on a salary for that trg programme, it is a huge commitment. As for volunteers, forget it! 
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I didn’t really mind doing CIC in '23, but I did start to wonder why I’d bothered about half way through UCC last year as soon as I realised that it’s essentially the same course.
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