When you get a new CI it’s unlikely they’ll be doing things on their own straight away as ‘we’ are cautious and want to make sure they do things ‘properly’ and they will ask if that’s OK. So the same would be applied to 18 year olds.
Keeping 18-20 year olds has been a massive problem since 2003. We treat them like adults ie have to have a DBS, expect them to do behave like adults and then treat them like children at every other turn.
I don’t think it’s with any doubt cadets are valued more than adults. I’ve seen too many new (ex cadet) staff who comment that they are all but ignored as staff, when a few months before they were fawned over. Welcome to the real world!!
I read the ACMB document and overall I got a sense of fiddling while Rome burned. Things taking far too long to complete. Although the electronic DBS move is positive albeit the MOD box tickers blocking it are bunch of slackers.
WRT to the 18+, why ignore what the others do in terms of 18 year olds?
The biggest driver as far as I can see is and irrational abject fear, a fear that you would lose potential staff. What does this suggest?
On the face of it the only people we can realistically hope to get in as staff on a regular basis are ex-cadets, coming through directly from being a cadet, which isn’t really a good situation. I’m an ex-cadet who aged out at 22, but when I started as staff there was a good mix of ex-cadets and people with no previous cadet experience, which I always felt was a brilliant environment. One of the people I got on best with was a bloke with no ATC background but an amazing array of experience(s), who did really good things with cadets.
I don’t see why cadets leaving at 18 and keeping the staff starting age as 20 is seen as such a problem. What it would do is ensure we have people in the Corps who want to be here and not just carrying on. If they come back who knows and if they do will it be at 20, 25, 30 etc, but in this way having a break would mean losing their cadet mates and gaining some life experiences, doing other things which can only benefit the organisation in the longer term.
The worrying thing the palpable fear displays is that there is something wrong with the adult staff model, that so very few non “ATC” people join or even show any interest?
The question that needs to be addressed by the ACMB is why isn’t being an adult member of staff attractive to people who haven’t been cadets?
I have to say that since the demise of the 22 year old cadet the maturity of staff has lessened. I observe 25-35 year olds and they act like big cadets, especially the singles, I do think some of them need to get a life. In the old days at 22 the vast majority would have been 2-3 years older than the next youngest cadet (I was 4), not in the same social groups, been at work for several years, their own social lives, if like me almost married, so that the ATC wasn’t the only thing in their lives. Too many 20 year olds coming through today haven’t lost the cadet connection, have too many mates who are still cadets which affects their ability to make the necessary transition to adult staff.
As a member of staff with no ATC background (girls werent accepted when I was the age to join), I joined because 2 of my children joined. I wanted to do something to support the squadron and the skills that I have fitted in very well. I’m now the training officer and talk about being thrown in the deep end! But I am thoroughly enjoying what I do and hope to take it further, when I’m ready. A close friend also joined at the same time, for the same reasons. TBH we had both outgrown the school PTA, but the experience we had there was transferrable to ATC.
"The question that needs to be addressed by the ACMB is why isn’t being an adult member of staff attractive to people who haven’t been cadets? "
Having worked in the volunteer sector for nearly 20 years, I think you’ll find this is not unusual to the corps. So many organisations struggle to recruit volunteers, motivate and retain them. The world we live in is so much busier and people seem reluctant to give up what free time they have to others, when it feels so precious to themselves.
The nature of volunteering has changed not just for us but accrossed the board, you don’t get that many people just walk off the street and volunteer anymore, not for us, not for the ACF, not for the Scouts.
Our best source of new staff is our cadets and it has been for many years.
If we binned our over 18 cadets I would have no radio Comms Officer, no First Aid Officer and no Recruit Training Officer. Plus my Training Officer would have left the Corps 2 and a half years ago and there is no guarantee he would have come back.
Maybe it’s not the 25-35 year olds who are immature? Maybe you’ve just become a miserable old git?
But if the model was attractive then we would get people with much more to give and the cadets to learn from.
I volunteer with other things and yes it’s difficult to get people to get involved but they do. In the ATC I think everything takes too long and the expectations are too high.
Not miserable old git, just a different set of rules by which you play obviously. I’d bounce cadets for some of things they do. It’s like they think because they’re in a youth organisation they need to act like the youufs to get acceptance from the youffs in order to gain any credibility.
I don’t think that at 18 I was that bothered one way or the other. Being in the ATC wasn’t the be all and end all for me, I had plenty going on outside the ATC. Although I know many whose whole life was centred on the ATC and still is.
I’ve never seen the ‘military’ element as a driver for being staff in the Corps. At times we make too much of it, when lets face it we are only dressing up (those adults in uniform) to appease the parent organisation and give those dumped on us as our leaders something they can identify with. I think if we had a more ‘civilian’ organisation they’d struggle with it.
Most of my contemporaries who left the ATC and wanted the military thing, joined the TA just up the road, they wouldn’t have joined another youth organisation.
Not really sure what the debate is here. The VGSs had CGIs at 18 for a long time and we (used to) leave them in charge of aeroplanes when we still had some.
As for the maturity question, I was one of a number of GS (no V in those days) staff cadets in the 60s that qualified as B cat instructors before they had to stop being cadets at 18 and, as such, could authorise flying, be left in charge of the airfield whilst flying was taking place and send all except first solos. Admittedly, there were some guiding hands close by.
It probably just shows how far we have come that an 18 year old is now not considered able to supervise anything. Eighteen year olds vote, drive, fly and fight for their country. The law regards them as adults, why shouldn’t the ACO?
The ACO sees them as children to suit their own needs. As you say there are places it happens. For me lose the uniform ie make them CIs and you lose that connection to the cadets which means they have to develop and find their own way in the adult ATC world. Keep them in uniform and they still look like cadets and invariably act like cadets. Which is something you see far too often with cadets who now go straight into uniform.
Maybe some of the fault lies with parents (we’re probably as guilty as any) who don’t let their children do things like they used to. Me and the mrs used to use buses or ride bikes to get to places, but even when our kids were growing up the buses were useless and biking to get to places was getting silly dangerous. I used to cycle to work but after a few near misses I wouldn’t do it now.
The way the system worked in the VGSs was that once they were 18 they had a choice; they could remain as a Staff Cadet up to the age of 20, or become a CGI. It worked well as the individual made their own decision about when they wanted to go over to the dark side. It was particularly useful for CCF Staff Cadets who had to stop being cadets when they left school.
Ah, just remembered, the ACO doesn’t like people making their own decisions.
