Okay, this is pretty impressive. It’s simple, but actually eye opening seeing what we are fundamentally missing.
They have a course that actually talks about youth work, what it is at it’s core. This isn’t a safeguarding course, it’s actually talking about how we as volunteers are developing young people.
One of the videos is from the “HQ Staff Officer for Working with Young People”. Do we have such a role? Someone who’s job it is to look at how we develop our volunteers to work well with young people? Again, not safeguarding, actual development stuff. (They also have regional leads of the same title)
Lots of talk about informal learning helping development. Structure, but with spontaneous learning opportunities.
Video overview of the ‘standard’ training program. Shows how to find lesson plans and resources etc. Again, do we have a standard method showing this? Normally just have to learn as you go. Given how often we seem to change where lesson info is it would be hard to standardise a video! Also an ‘ideas area’ to give examples of things you can do to make the lessons more involved and add some verity.
Also outlines of the above but focus on RM cadets and juniors. Again, showing you where and how to find all the lesson plans etc.
There’s a ‘standard’ parade night power point. What volunteers should be doing and just the general order of a typical night. Lots of stuff about how we communicate within a cadet environment.
Part of that PowerPoint is basic disciplinary stuff. How to challenge bad behaviour. I’ve certainly never had any training on that from the RAFAC.
Clearly the in person training is being referred to a lot here too. This is the jist of what this bit covered:
Then there’s a whole section about different roles. I skipped this.
Genuinely an interesting flick through. I don’t necessarily think I learnt anything, but if I was a brand new member of staff, that would be super useful. Combined with the face to face learning mentioned in the Facebook post above, it would appear we really are missing some basic training here. We have AVIP, and I really don’t think it meets the needs of a volunteer who’s looking after young people.
