Spurred on my @OC.1324’s desire for a Phase 1, 2 & 3 training for CFAV, and similar to the BADER Wishlist thread, what would you like to see in RAFAC CFAV initial Training?
In my mind
Phase 1 Initial Training - Over period of 3 Months
Safeguarding
EFA
Bader/ACTO 10
First Class Instructor
Blue Wings Sim Instructor
Phase 2 Specialist Training - Over period of 12 Months
Dependant on the activities you want to get involved in, perhaps split into aviation, mil skills, ceremonial & AT pathways with no restriction to completing multiple pathways.
Phase 3 Role Training - Over period of 12 Months
Exec role training over first year in post (OC, Adj, Training, SNCO, Wing SMS Post etc), with a mentor assigned to support
At one point Risk Assessor Course completion was a requirement within the promotion matrix from Sgt-FS and Plt Off-Fg Off. I haven’t got access to the forms at the moment but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in the version I had to fill out for a CFAV last year.
I would suggest that the only training that new staff should do are the ones we are legally obliged to give them. Child Protection and Prevent. Everything else is a barrier to joining. This will enable a CI to help out on your unit, be the ratio, take cadets to events.
If they wish to take a greater role than they will need to under take further training specific to their interest and path they wish to follow.
Not saying you have these as pre-join training. These are training whilst they are in their probationary period.
if you don’t you are introducing a barrier to retention so you end up loosing people & stunting that initial enthusiasm.
It also means you then end up with inconsistent staff quality. If all volunteers do when they turn up is sit there doing their own stuff then the will stop coming down.
This is key. What’s the bare minimum to allow someone to start parading regularly and get stuck in?
I’d say that’s only really safeguarding, and organisational overview.
If we’re talking about someone new, they should never be on their own anyway initially. So things like first aid etc should be covered off by others.
The old ‘basic’ course did this well, if delivered right. A single day covering safeguarding legal and organisation requirements. It also covered how the organisation is structured. Expectations of staff etc etc.
In a single day I’d say you can give someone the absolute basics. Then have a six month period where they can work on gaining other things but whilst actively being able to attend the unit. Possibly a whole weekend consolidation course as part of this ‘ph 2’ where you can cover loads of stuff.
The organisation really struggles to recruit. So when you’ve got someone offering their time, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to get stuck in.
Instead of a day you could easily run it over 4 evenings on teams too to make it more accessible. But I do think delivery by an actual instructor is key early on to allow people to ask questions and start to feel part of it, rather than being forced to do 8 hours of self guided e-learning packages!
Basic (on squadron support): DBS, Safeguarding training online with a quick quiz, but can be supported side-by-side by another member of staff for the under confident when it comes to IT. EFA, enabling them to do CPR and put someone in the recovery position (can be assessment only).
That enables someone to safely help keep the doors open.
Ph1 (competent youth leader): A selection of things that could be run as a combination of standalone courses or centralised and grouped together for efficient training.
Risk Assessor, MOI through the medium of the first class syllabus, MTa kit training (getting everyone leading the exercises / working together) and taking part in a broad range of what they can enable back on the unit, DofE assessor (delivered online through DofE), planning events on SMS.
I’m not wedded to this, but I think all of this contributes to being confident delivering a lot of our core stuff, with the opportunity to actually learn / refresh on some of our content.
Ph2: Specific online, case-study based learning packages for adj, training officer, and squadron SNCO. Self-paced learning development that teach how to do the jobs well, share nice videos covering how different units handle it, how experienced people view the role, and what good OCs need from people doing those roles — solidifies what we expect from these roles.
Open to that being a combined central course for both roles though. Could have a “squadron management” course.
Ph3: any specialist training for delivering activities. Don’t have to have done Ph2 first.
This is key. The full day AVIP has been a genuine barrier to several potential volunteers I’ve known (including an earlier iteration of my own journey) who only want to volunteer in the evenings, are unavailable at weekends due to work, etc.
Most of our training should be online and plentiful whenever possible, provided in multiple ways (evenings and whole days). Flexibility is the name of the game.
There is serious benefit to residential courses, but we need to make them really good and desirable / fun so it’s not seen as a negative.
Building community and that sense that you’ve joined something big and energised is a real benefit to centralised residential courses, provided that’s the energy you inject into them.
A key enabler would be if the online courses were Corps wide, which meant their would be several every week, and you could be doing it with people from all over - that ticks two boxes: the ‘not having to wait till the Heat Death of the Universe’ to become useful/involved thing, and the ‘feeling like part of a really big, welcoming gang’ thing.
I’d go as far as to condense a lot of wing and region volunteer staffing into corps-level provision so it’s delivered centrally without isms.
I’d do the same with media. Wings and regions don’t need their own platforms. They should publish via a central RAFAC channel.
There’s no need to provide some things at that level when they can be managed centrally and more efficiently. And the more you can separate out as deliverable to an infinite number of people, the less you need to worry about course numbers.
Quite a long thread to jump into but here’s a few thoughts:
Initial training needs to be minimal and ideally delivered remotely or via self study as we don’t want to creat barriers;
Really we want to align this with getting volunteers attending parade nights as soon as they can, so the initial effort should be limited to safety and safeguarding (combined with only having to do the DBS if possible, can we park BPSS until a volunteer needs to go off unit?);
Continuation and role-specific training should put the volunteer first. This should include MOI (or something better), use of Bader, and intro courses for exec roles (these could surely be self-paced or blended learning)
As a side note I agree with @OC.1324 and others of the benefits of centralising training, but realistically residential isn’t the best route.
Finding accommodation is already hard (and more staff courses risk pushing out space for cadet activity); sharing a 20-person billet, an uncomfortable bed with early morning starts and no wifi is not an easy sell to new volunteers; it’s hard and getting harder for people to take time off work (plus teachers, students etc can only do a few weeks a year).
What could be done is to use the learning management elements within Learn, or better still DLE, so people can manage their training and choose courses at a location, time and delivery method that suits. It would help, too, if region or wing courses went into a pool (as shooting ones do already) so out of wing candidates can fill empty spaces.
I don’t see a need for centralisation - a centralised script sure - but let’s not pretend that HQAC or any other non-Sqn formation have the capacity (capability?) to even do their own jobs right now, let alone anyone else’s.
Each Sqn/Sector takes a turn to run an online zoom/whatever course (once a year?) that covers basic safeguarding, structure of the org, rough outline of the expectations of the CFAV and the most basic of first aid (recovery position, group safety near a casualty, casualty management and contact with emergency services) - thats nine hundred courses a year that anyone from Berwick to St Hellier, Caernarvon to Great Yarmouth can dial into.
That, with a DBS check, allows them to take part in Sqn and off-sqn activities - and given the SCD, we need those bodies.
BPSS isn’t needed until they are going onto a station or are around weapons.
