Story time. A friend of mine gets announced that she is being promoted to SGT at remembrance, only that she is in the hospital so cannot attend. Staff then don’t actually promote her saying “we don’t believe you are ready for this as you didn’t attend remembrance”. From there is just goes down hill, she does RAF WARMA and injures her hip due to no fault of her own, when she returns to squadron she is grilled and bullied by staff about how she has made the squadron look bad. Bare in mind she has had nothing but glowing reviews from the staff of all the courses and camps she has ever been on. Then a few months later she is passed up for promotion again, now unfortunately she stuggles with su****al thoughts and this triggers them as her staff have done nothing but trod on her and torment her for all of her time in cadets. So when me as a good friend report her staff to the RAFAC safeguarding team because HER STAFF ARE AWARE OF HER SU****ALNESS AND CONTINUE TO BULLY HER THEY CHANGE NOTHING and the RAFAC safeguarding team also do NOTHING. She is also nearing 18 and so needs a DBS, however a brand new cadet has made a FALSE allegation saying that they were called a slut by the CPL of this story when all they said was those short shorts are inappropriate for cadets and now her DBS is on the line. Apparently it’s not just her squadron as well, it’s others across the wing as well. I understand we are a military group but we are also a youth organisation.
Any way what are peoples thoughts and should I take this up the CoC?
Some elements of the story have been changed to protect her identity, however 90% is of how it happened.
This is awful to hear, especially how RAFAC Safeguarding has done nothing. I would take it up with OC wing or OC region. Yes it is a military organisation, but this is serious, especially since there are sui****l thoughts on the line. The police and samaritans could also be notified. ACP001 is the most important document in the RAFAC and must be adhered to by both cadets and staff. For now she should stay away from Sqn until the matter is resolved. That would be my advice
You don’t have to follow CoC here. The chain of command isn’t absolute, and there’s situations (health and safety and safeguarding) where you’re allowed to disregard it in favour of concerns going straight to the relevant people.
Who exactly was it this went to? If it only went to safeguarding at a local level, it’s worth going straight to the HQRAFAC permanent staff SG team via the notifiable incident form on their website.
If it did go to them and wasn’t actioned, then there’s always the route of pursuing it as a discip issue rather than a safeguarding one*. Few different ways to do so depending on how far up the chain you want to take it:
There’s a general complaints multiuser email that goes to HQRAFAC People Ops listed on the contact us page of the RAFAC website.
If you’re in a region that operates under Pillars (SW, WW, SNI for sure, and I think others?), contacting the Regional Personnel pillar. This is likely what I would do if it were me.
Imo those are likely to be more fruitful than the volunteer chain of command (as that clearly hasn’t worked at a local level).
I don’t think I’d recommend this - particularly the latter, because it will ruffle feathers (but that would certainly do the job). I would note that an RC is likely to delegate the actual investigation down to the Personnel Pillar (if you’re in one of the regions with that model) or potentially Wing Executive Officer if you’re in a region with the old model so I’d suspect going there is a more effective option. Likewise an OCW would have to get the Pers Pillar or WExO’s advice before being able to do anything, too.
*It screams SG to me, but if HQRAFAC SG hadn’t taken action, there’s not really much that can be done to force them to, so other routes are worth considering.
DBS looks at criminal records (and a few other flags). It’s run by a government agency and won’t be looking at what a cadet said to another cadet on a parade night.
So reading through and not seen anyone mention it so I will raise it,
PARENTS
If a cadet tries to raise things above Sqn level there’s some subtle nuances that can mean things aren’t communicated correctly.
Ask the parents to get involved - question at Sqn level the raise further.
Regarding the comments contacting the CAC & RC because they are very often the decision maker they often try to keep them selves clear to avoid any conflict of interest particularly if it is dismissing staff.
If you do want to hit the senior chain then it’s the Chief of Staff (CoS) that you would need to contact.
But use parents first if nothing else for the emotional support.
Lots of info on here and even a report a concern functionality that goes to HQAC. ACP 4 actually tells you to log a complaint/concern via this methodology or the Sharepoint site and not necessarily use the chain of command (standard 6 of ACP 4) - thats not widely known or talked about!
If you are going to do that though, make sure it’s in clear English, balanced and factual. Just makes it smoother to deal with and more likely if appropriate action to be taken