Direct supervision doesn’t mean hand holding. If I’m supervising a DofE group that I haven’t taught myself, I’m going to want to check, at least for their first bit of cooking, that they know what they’re doing. It’s no different to how I’d probably try and meet them for their first main road crossing to make sure they’re being safe.
If something goes wrong, it’s on the supervisor. It’s all well and good that someone tells me they’ve been trained, but ‘assessing’* that for my self is an important step.
*Not assessing as in DofE assessment, but assessing for competence/safe use.
That’s not what the ACATI looks like to me - for me, assessment/assurance says ‘an assessor who’s not met them before can watch them while they do X or Y in a training/training+ environment, and decide whether they’re happy with attitude and skills’ - and I could plausibly stretch that to meaning watching them cook half their meals on the Bronze practice weekend.
The ACATI however says expeditions, which a) means the whole thing, and b) means both the practice and the actual Bronze (and possibly into practice Silver?) and for me, that is just completely opposed to the DofE ethos, and I simply don’t see how a DofE assessor could sign off an expedition supervised in that way.
Which very much depends on the training, the group of Cadets and who did it. Once again we have a blanket rule being made up which assumes that staff are morons incapable of delivering activities that we are qualified to deliver.
I know many people would be unwilling to do so given the lack of top-cover, but I wonder about some kind of “work-in”?
Take previously delivered activities and replicate them exactly, making the activities happen anyhow. If a critical mass of squadrons were to undertake such activities, HQ Region wouldn’t have the staffing capacity to fire you all.
They can probably fire you at the click of a button and if being vindictive trigger a safeguarding investigation, I mean look what happened to a member from here who had a BBQ.
Too many here rely on an Enhanced DBS for other employment outside the RAFAC, it just takes one anonymous phone call to Cranwell.