This seems to be more common than people think. I also had my medal application rejected by HQAC Pers on the grounds that I “hadn’t been a SNCO in the RAF” (I was adding a couple of years or so of previous service), therefore such previous service couldn’t count towards the CFM.
I returned the application with a terse note asking them to re-read the relevant section of the regulations that I’d enclosed with it, highlighted for their ease of reference.
Not a word of apology but the medal arrived some 6 weeks later.
? Would you expand please? Staff attendance records on Bader solve the problem of poorly attending CIs?
Our staff attendance is uploaded by children who seem to guess whether staff are there or not. They also do it in the first half hour of a parade night…but they do not do it every parade night.
I see no problem with a CI who attends once a month if he or she has something to offer. They might help with camps, fundraising, Sqn maintenance etc. They might just be an extra pair of hands now and then. I see no reason to cull CIs unless they have genuinely list interest.
I wonder how much a CI ‘costs’ per year in admin?
Ahhhh… that’s due to me getting an email saying "look at these topics"and me not reading all 114 posts! Apologies.
Medals for CIs? You’ll be paying them next…
Quite obviously because the whole point of receiving a medal is that it is in recognition of service.
Why should a CI, or indeed any CFAV be entitled to a CFM if they rarely ever attend to provide that service?
It’s not an automatic entitlement for uniformed staff. One doesn’t simply say “I went into uniform on this date 12 years ago… Gimme”. The application has to be approved to the effect that the person “has completed the requisite qualifying service, is efficient in his/her duties and is qualified in accordance with the CFM regulations” and that they are “therefore recommended as deserving of the award”.
The point being made here is that being a CI has no minimum attendance criteria but the award of the CFM is based on the assumption that uniformed staff will have served a minimum amount.
A CI who has given at least the same level of service could/should be eligible for the medal whereas the person who is “on the books” but has barely turned up a half a dozen times in the last 5 years is arguably not deserving of the award because they haven’t given the long service which the medal recognises.
It is, in effect, exactly the same reason why I don’t have a medal for Op TELIC… Because I didn’t do it.
Who is suggesting that an award of any long-service medal be made without the entitlement criteria being met?
I said that as we all know, there are official minimum attendance requirements for uniformed Staff. And not for non-uniformed Staff. But if CIs DO meet that attendance requirement…plus they’ve served the required number of years: then…
My point was made earlier regarding Bader being used as an appropriately-objective tool to confirm basic eligibility for all CFAVs (ie overall length of service PLUS attendance during that time).
That, coupled with an OC’s sign-off as ‘eligible in all other respects’, should (in my opinion) allow a CI to receive the CFM if they wish to receive it
Come on ladies & gentlemen: I’ve yet to hear a single reasoned logical counter-argument to this proposal. And no, previous custom & practice doesn’t fit the bill.
This is an unfair and unjustifiable deprivation for those that are often lauded as being “the backbone of the Corps”.
So say a CI was outstandingly-good, with perfect attendance, and serves for 11 yrs. Then no CFM. Or attends once most months for 13 yrs. Then no CFM. Or their OC feels they cannot in good faith recommend them. Then no CFM.
To me this is utterly-straightforward. And should be sorted, prior to (or during) ATC80 next year.
It is an assumption. When I was in my 12 year CFM cycle I did shift work on and off for 6 years and had periods away from home, which when on shift work meant I did no more than 3 nights a month. My CFM came through after 12 years in uniform as an adult. I know a lot of uniformed staff who do shift work or have extended periods away on business and have CFMs and clasps. So how this differs from a CI who may attend to just do their thing, is beyond me.
As we don’t clock in and out at the squadron no one has any idea how long you are there.
The medal I thought would be for satisfactory service, which has nothing to do with how many hours you put in. A CI attending once or twice a month to do what they do, is satisfactory service in my book and would apply equally to uniformed staff, doing the same.
That might be fine in your book, but it’s a long service medal based upon an assumed period of service each year.
If a CFAV routinely hasn’t met their minimum monthly attendance for the 12 years then they aren’t eligible.
Oh well the Wg Cdr must have been happy as they must have signed mine off then, given I was Sqn Cdr when I got my CFM and subsequent clasps.
You would need to be a hard to not sign someone off and the time to see if they hadn’t done the mythical hours.
I’m sure all sorts of people get signed off for all sorts of things and lack of service is probably overlooked in many areas.
But we can’t discuss a theoretical situation such as awarding CIs the CFM if we don’t consider what the intention of the award is.
If for example a CI turns up twice a year that’s technically fine as far as the Corps is concerned. But attending 15-20 parade nights over a 12 year period is not what the CFM is intended to recognise.
One has to set the bar somewhere and for the CFM it has been set as 12 years of uniformed service which in itself requires at least 12 hours per month.
I think Wilf is quite right. Where you’ve got CIs doing exactly the same or more then I don’t see why they shouldn’t be eligible.
Indeed. And whilst this may (perhaps) have been somewhat-subjective in the past, there can be no real room for manouvre now that we have absolute percentage attendance criteria for progression through the promotions matrixes (I’m uncomfortable with the word matrices)
To me, it seems to be just a small incremental change…if an individual (we’re talking uniformed at this point) MUST be able to show appropriate mimimum attendance (extracted from Bader records) to go AASgt->ASgt->AFS->AWO (or APO->PltOff->FgOff->FltLt), AND overall duration in each rank, then why can’t exactly that same approach be used within Bader to automatically generate a ‘CFM Eligibility Indicator’?
And: that proposed additional Bader Staff information tab would individually-exist for ALL CFAVs recorded as active staff within Bader.
Suppose the Corps had an excellent Adult Sgt (and ex-CWO) who had served brilliantly for 11years182days
Say they suffer a sporting injury (outwith RAFAC) and, being unable to march or do drill, decide to become a Civilian Instructor. In so doing, completely in character with their previous superb contribution to the squadron and the Corps, during the six months they are a CI they put in even more hours than they did in uniform, and are asked by Wg to cover for their OC who is off on maternity leave…
Is it really fair that because they have had the audacity to become a CI at the far-end of their Corps career (as opposed to at the beginning, where it would have no affect upon CFM entitlement) that they would then have no rights to a well-deserved long service medal?
ps feel free to amend the above situation to read 11years364days as an Adult Sgt RAFAC, followed by 1day as a Civilian Instructor RAFAC…you see my point?
Nah, I think it ought to be more nuanced than that - compare a CI who organises and attends/runs half a dozen AT weekends away each year, but only attends one parade night a month and does nothing else, is certainly providing a great deal of value, while the office tea drinker who’s attendance is universal but who’s output is more marginal.
(I don’t want one by the way, I take the view that recognition for services to youth groups should be society wide, and civilian in nature).
Ah, but within the current matrix model, both an Adult Sgt RAFAC and a Plt Off RAFAC with that particular attendance profile will NEVER be promoted. Nor will they ever become entitled to the CFM.
Be more specific. Are you talking aggregated annual performance reports? Career average of OC’s AFI Pers Admin form comments? Upvotes from the Cadet portal?
A long service medal MUST inarguably be awarded for overall duration of service. Precisely what that service is currently predicated upon is mainly, duty hours at sqn level (what we called in the RAuxAF ‘Non-Continuous Training’) and might be subject to reinterpretation in the future.
Your own selflessness does you no credit (nor does it help your presumably-CI comrades) but more-importantly, it already exists (in the form of MBEs/BEMs). And since they are, to a close approximation unobtainable, a CFM can be seen as a sort-of proxy for such awards.
If the Cadet Forces are established to be staffed, primarily, with CFAVs that have the legal status of civilians in uniform, and that military regular/reserve personnel have their own long-service medals: tell me convincingly how the CFM isn’t ‘civilian in nature’?
No, unless it is part of an organised SMS activity.
Regular evening moving between units isn’t recorded but they should be monitored by their line manager to ensure their committment is being met as their role might not involve visiting units or being out and about during the week.