This one:
Arrangements agreed for safe disposal of rubbish - double bagged and stored away from Sqn building for 72hrs decontamination prior to removal from site.
Will be interesting, we can’t leave anything around our building or the MGS will get shirty with us.
Welfare call to all cadets’ parents/carers and seek clarification on any cadets and their families who may have symptoms or are self-isolating.
That’s going to take forever with all of our cadets.
Inform WHQ of any CFAVs who are deceased, unable or unwilling to return to operations.
Socially distanced fire drills too.
Contact the parents of cadets not attending in first week of parading for welfare check and to ensure they received details of Sqn operational status
Contact CFAVs not attending in first week of parading for welfare check and to ensure they received details of Sqn operational status
If we’re limited to 13 cadets and 2 staff a night it’ll be weeks before we have everyone back.
This appears to be similar to what it seems the guidance shops, schools etc have been given. Basically you can open from x, these are the guidelines but it’s down to you and if if goes belly up, guess who’s in the frame. I don’t really think anything has been explicit except the distancing. We can’t have anything explicit given the different layouts of huts, room sizes, entrance and exit routes, just like every other establishment. People may not like having something hard and fast, but it can’t happen. My RA based on room size etc was for no more than 4 per room and the main hall clear for general movement. Ultimately though it will come down to parents to decide what happens. If they don’t want their kiddies coming back, like there was those keeping them away from the end of Feb, we can’t do much about it.
We are still 6-7 weeks or more away from anything happening and as said this is likely to change many times, so until we get the final document, sit tight and enjoy the summer and concentrate on home, family and work.
Whilst we look to get staff back from September and hopefully cadets in October, our counterparts on the water plan to run their summer boating programme throughout August.
My only real pushback would be where’s does the time come to do this fairly extensive work on unit? There’s no provision for VA to support delivery just a get it done.
Also the post parade night extra cleaning Cadets are not allowed to participate in… On a good night I get back circa 11pm already so the only the option will be to kick the kids out early
Yup! A bit annoying really. I understand it from an ‘attending the unit’ point of view, but as what @angus said in another thread, I just want to get back outdoors with the cadets! Mountain Training says as an ML I could take a group of 30 up a hill quite happily under the current rules but within cadets, according to this I can’t take anyone out until Sept/Oct. Again, I understand it for the squadron nights, that needs careful management, but those of us with NGB awards should be allowed to start organising activates within our NGBs own guidelines.
According to this document, no off-squadron activities can happen until our squadron is signed off as safe to open up for parade nights. That will likely be 6-8 weeks. I recon if I put my mind to it I could pretty happily plan an outing for a week or twos time that fully meets all current government guideline. That’s my bug bear with this now that I’ve had time for it to sink in!
Focus on retaining cadets, so we’ll start off with a fire drill, “H&S refresher briefing to all personnel - include all COVID-19 mitigations”, “Welfare briefing to all personnel”, and “Security refresher briefing to all personnel”.
Welcome back!
People in a room is easy whatever the distance take a chair and a tape measure and if it’s a metre next chair goes there etc, ensuring there is plenty of room to get in and out. This is what we did in the office at work essentially except the desks were taped off for sole occupancy of that desk so now it’s 2 or 3 per day, instead of 5. Saying this lot can have all these numbers and we can’t is pointless.
Restrictions on numbers is because I imagine we’re inside and given the fickle nature of British weather arranging outside parade night activities always needs an indoor alternative.
From what I’ve heard local schools have had groups of year 10s in each day and no more than 25% each day, occupying limited numbers of classrooms, but only those kids using each classroom and it seems this will be the same from Sep when they all go back, but year groups are being kept apart in bubbles.
If we’ve got to do things, so be it or we can stay closed until the virus has disappeared (which it won’t), which is pretty much what has been happening wrt to shops and businesses.
However I do find it incongruous that no one is compelled to return, but unless they say why we have to effectively kick them out after a couple of weeks. Only a supercilious bunch of idiots could come up with that. We’ve been working right through although some people haven’t come in and no one has said we’re going to get rid of you unless you do. But then “industrial relations” has never been really been on HQACs list of competencies.
In fairness, i’d say H&S and welfare are pretty essential. The security brief (arguably) less so, but would take maybe 5 mins max?
Yummy.
A whole parade evening of briefings…
Those cadets that return, might never again!
So with one if the points in this Return to Squadron Parade Nights guide being
Place appropriate Covid-19 signage around the building including reminders on good hygiene and social distancing. All rooms must have maximum occupancy notices on the door. Ensure COVID Secure poster in prominent location
Where can we source signage and this COVID Secure Poster?
I know my OC will see this as the whole first night.
We’ll probably throw in a climatic injuries as well, and spread this set of “policy updates” over 2 nights (possibly including code of conduct if we get round to it).
Could we do this as a VPN before returning, instead of wasting the “how exciting we’re back face-to-face” opportunity? I think the doc suggests not?
We’ll be doing as much as possible of the boring stuff as a VPN before we return.
We’ve already agreed that the in-person parade nights need to be for stuff we can’t do online.
Anyway if we’re limited to 13 cadets a night it’ll take us 8 nights to get through all of our cadets so we’d have wasted a month before we even do anything…
One of my favourite lines;
“Alternatively, a hybrid programme may be used with lower numbers attending the sqn on a rotational basis, with others undertaking virtual activities.”
Because we have an abundance of CFAV’s available to plan and deliver both F2F and Virtual training!
And it’s fine as long as you only have multiple of 13 in each classification group, but what about when you have odds and sods, do you deliver everything 3 times?
“Use back-to-back or side-by-side rather than face-to-face set ups.”
Squadrons are inevitably going to struggle to run fun and engaging activities given the constraints we are working in. To save 900+ squadrons/DFs trying to solve the same problem, it’s a pity that there are no suggestions made as to activities that we could all try.
I appreciate that this may not be the document to show it, but I would hope that by now HQAC and senior volunteers around the country were coming up with a list of suggestions for activities that we could use - as a starting point.
Failing that, at least some way of formally capturing ideas that worked from units around the country, and sharing it with all the other units - so that we can create a list of best practices and all learn from each others successes. Just like we didn’t do with the Virtual Parade Nights.
I have no idea what I can do with 13 cadets and 2 staff that is:
A) outdoors ideally
B) Doesn’t use equipment that needs to be sterilised every evening
C) Falls within safe ratios
D) can be done in our car park
E) Doesn’t require travelling
F) Is repeatable for the 3 times I’d need to do it to cycle all cadets through.
G) is fun and/or engaging.
Answers on a postcard please.
I sincerely hope that we continue to get support for Virtual Parades in a more organised way young forwards. There have been some great talks from people and these will need to continue going forwards. 13+2 won’t even come close to engaging some squadrons head count - so VPNs for those not at sqn could work.
However, I’d like to see some more centralised support for these. Be it Wg/Rg/Corps level.
a slightly more organised version of the Virtual Parade Night Resources Team of MS Teams?