Is it just me or has it gotten harder to get sufficient staff support for weekend activity?
My focus is on military skills so we have a smaller pool to start with due to qualification requirements, but also seeing this with other activities and weekend camps.
Is this a local issue or a wider one?
Itās the biggest delivery risk in the org.
There is no longer wide spread appetite to deliver or support off Sqn activities and I donāt know how we fix it.
Iām seeing more emails asking to share activities and camps out to all staff, as numbers are low and without staff, activities are being cancelled.
Reasons why fewer staff are putting their name down 
Itās almost like cutting VA, demonstrating contempt for staff by banning them having a beer in the evening and now making CIās pay messing has had consequences.
See here:
I think itās linked to the wider drop in volunteering availability and an increase in people wanting to do ad hoc volunteering.
I also think thereās too many competing events so everyoneās working against each other for personnel.
Focusing specific at the air cadets i think the PTS has killed it by making things more regimented & too linear. Previously the weekend events were things that couldnāt be delivered at Sqn - AT, L98, D of E
Now itās more common for things like blue space & blue fieldcraft which tend towards the power points.
The amount of weekends & camps is also causing volunteer fatigue with an almost cultish requirement to fill every weekend.
I think COVID had a huge part to play.
People had time off to reflect on what they actually want to do in their free time and this has probably become the culture and we never reacted to it.
Iām a massive fan of micro volunteering and plan around people doing 1 evening, day etc
For example a region run activity involved in across 2 separate weekends with single day volunteering encouraged currently has 12 individuals volunteering in total across both weekends.
I donāt know if this is an awareness issue, communication issue, timing issue, or just the general state of things.
Part of it this, especially larger geographical area events.
An example National Armed Forces Day Parade had been communicated widely via CoC but when speaking to individuals in a different wing at Sqn level they didnāt have a clue. Hence the regional mail drop going to all.
CoC Comms donāt work any more
I agree with this as it wiped the slate a little & was the great reset.
The cadets who joined after Covid are just now becoming staff but without the knowledge & experience of those from pre-covid
I think the organisation as a whole still hasnāt adapted its mindset to a post-Covid world.
A lot of activities seem to be delivered by PowerPoint or pitched at the wrong level resulting they being uninspiring tick box mindset (looking at you space syllabus) & itās not encouraging people 
Too many events and ācompulsoryā events staff are expected to attend. This takes staff out of being available for their specialist areas or to run activities aligned to their interests .
As we all only have a finite amount of time to give.
Would love to see the ratios/numbers of staff with each qual over the years
My experience:
)and the list goes on
Itās this for me.
Iām absolutely knackered and giving up two week nights plus the extra role I already do leaves me spent, so any extra capacity I reserve for volunteering to take cadets flying and gliding. And I want to find extra time to train up for things like running the air rifle rangeā¦
Even with the number of random parades and inter-squadron events that pop up throughout the year ā so many of these events also require squadron staff to transport and deliver.
Iāve had to be really firm this year because itās a relentless pressure and you feel like youāre letting people down when you draw a line somewhere, because itās always a high stakes priority.
I remember receiving some stern words because an event hadnāt been supported by anyone, but it clashed with both inter-wing sports day and wing competitions day. How do you even begin to unpick that?
With āmicro volunteeringā in mind, I think we should start advertising for teams to focus on delivering things like this as volunteering offers. Essentially like we have the VGSs.
People can get involved in more, but having teams who happily focus on stuff like this takes the pressure off everyone else.
It can be really frustrating when organising events trying to get a commitment from people to guide the scale of event and cadet number selection. Often lots of last minute opting in or out to help and less people now happy to carry the heavy admin burden to put on some events. Iām definitely scaling back a bit as it seems to be the same faces of qualified staff running more and more events with less and less support. This will only compound as 30 x 30 grows. A structured staff training/CPD programme would mean itās not the same people having to run all events for certain specialities
I often think this. A bit like Scouts have āActive Support Teamsā who drop in to run specialist events. We should be looking at this for shooting and fieldcraft. They could rotate around units delivering WHTs for example on parade nights and then assist with wing run events more often
One of the issues with our wing training team is that they are not willing to travel so the top of the wing gets loads of courses & the bottom gets hardly anything.
Iāve wondered whether sectors would benefit from ACF-style training teams.
So itās not about āsector commandā so much as it is dedicated āsector trainingā that doesnāt require any extra squadron staffing.
Spare places can be offered to cadets from further afield.
Yes, it requires more people. But if we look to recruit with these roles in mind, we may find lots of people who want to give up half or a full weekend per month and call that their commitment. Currently our offer is ājoin your local unit which parades twice a week on school nightsā.
Itās the same as lots of people taking on staff roles because they can no longer make parade nights work but want to contribute. We just need to identify where different lifestyle opportunities may exist and recruit accordingly.
Might not work everywhere, but thatās ok too.
We might have been able to do this pre-Covid (& even during covid as the future recovery) but now there isnāt the personnel.
The syllabus needs drastic pruning to enable any sort of long term recovery . Otherwise individual sqns start opting out of topics & the whole
thing fails.
I think the wing system needs a drastic overhaul in order to guarantee stability- in sort wings in their current form are no longer fit for purpose & that whole middle tier needs a drastic rethink.
Covid was the perfect time to reset everything and we did nothing as an org