How does one identify “unmet demand” for a particular youth group? Do we think they’ll just be looking for an event spread or try to identify “this community really wants to join the Air Cadets but the nearest squadron is 20 miles away”?
Our waiting list has more people on it than we have cadets on the Sqn. We’re limited by number of adult volunteers and building capacity. We could gather their locations to show where the unmet demand was and how large.
1 Like
Well yes, I’ve got 30 on a waiting list, 50 on the books, and a FRA that says max occupancy of 60 . . .
Money can only fix so many things before the issue of lack of volunteers becomes apparent.
1 Like
Certainly for us we’re not unhealthy int hat our books say we have 4 members of staff plus two supernumeraries, however the reality there were only two of us in the building last night. I’m exceptionally unwilling to grow the Sqn until I know I consistently have the staff to deliver a program. We tick over on the recruitment maintaining our numbers but we don’t actively recruit.
Also we need to adjust our volunteering to March what people can offer.
Nominally I have 7 staff and 3 probationers (at various phases).
In practice we often have only 2 or 3 staff available on a night due to shifts, work travel and that some of the volunteers will only do one night a week.
Some of us only do that one night a week because we have been burned out and pooped on by the organisation and have other interests. It seems to really grip some people that I have other interests outside of the ATC…
4 Likes
That’s the heart of the matter really.
We have a system that is designed for all intents and purposes for different times. OCs are being told they have plenty of staff (or even too many and need to give some to other units) but in practice we struggle for ratios twice a week.
So we can’t really support expansion without something changing.
4 Likes
Hqac cant compute this, say again. 
