I am a little overwhelmed with the number of comments and questions coming through ACC and I am grateful to @mikellee for stepping in and helping out. We have a new comms manager in post so I am going to ask him to start engaging as well so you are not waiting for ages for a response to your very valid questions, concerns and your excellent suggestions for improvements.
Please try and bear in mind what Mike has said about the ever-growing development backlog. It is massive and getting bigger all the time - but our available developer resource is not. This means we have to be selective and be very careful about what we are promising. Please also remember that the VSDT is primarily focused on Cadet Portal rather than SMS.
We have already had parents saying they had no idea what ATC Sunday was and if they could attend or not. Iâm always on at the cadets about checking the portal and telling their parents what they are bidding for or interested in. We even had up to now, 4 parents asking how they log into portal but I had to tell them that its only for the cadets to manage themselves. It is up to the cadet to show the parents what it is about and what they can do with it. Iâm hoping when we get all the cadets signed up and logging in more that once a month to at least once a week then all will be good in the cadet world. Until then I will be informing parents what they are signing up to as we do not always have the staff to transport them which is then on the parents shoulders to get them there.
Also with cadets bidding for places and not showing up it kinda reflects negatively on the Sqn staff. I often feel like a one man band on Sqn when it comes to portal, Iâm trying my hardest to get them all using it and constantly asking when they last logged in. They donât know we can actually see when they logged in so I ask them to get their phones out and show me how they log in.
Oooooh! I cannot put into words how deeply and viscerally annoyed I get when wing declare an event with a bidding deadline but start to allocate places on the activity before all bids are in! (pre-CP)
A âparent briefâ button - emails parents (based on NoK data held) of âselectedâ cadets the summary of the event (perhaps that which is on the CP description) - could be a Sqn initiated only (to allow choice) or higher org level.
In the same way a cadet brief button (although the existing notification system may already cover this) to push info into inboxes - yes, I know cadets should always be checking.
Activities with sub apps - a nominal roll report generated from the Main App that lists all cadets, their status and the sub app theyâve bid / been assigned to. At present Iâm going to each sub app to pull details.
The inability to set a Cadet Portal deadline beyond that of the Main event deadline - Iâve observed cadet signups after my own imposed DL as Sqn CP DLâs run later - it would be useful to prevent this as sometimes an event needs to be sealed at a specific time and keeping track of which cadets have recently signed up (esp if a sqn has changed their status to âselectedâ) can be difficult.
Sqns being able to adjust cadet status for events run by another, Iâve had a few cases where cadets will be assigned selected status by a Sqn making it hard to find recently added cadets aside from Excel comparison with previously printed nominal rolls.
Visibility of events (a contentious one) - at initial setup, an organiser can add Sqns and add all cadets of those Sqns to an event, select their status as selected and then delete them from the activity - this way, all cadets receive a notification that an event is in existence and can ask Sqn staff about it. The above has been checked and tested (small scale I stress!)
Can the home CP screen be aligned with the SMS Dashboard in that all invited events display immediately upon login rather than the cadet having to navigate Events > Upcoming Events? Or at least the âMy Eventsâ card on the home screen take you directly to that section (no click function on the card title currently). Noted info overload may be best avoided!
Iâm sure I asked for something that also informs the parents as we donât want little Johnny bidding for things that staff canât transport him to, and we all know how bad Cadets are at informing parents of up coming activities. Iâve lost count of the amount of activity letters we had sent home in the past that got lost between Sqn and their home.
I have constantly been on at our lot that they need to be checking Portal minimum of once - twice a week, we have Cadetâs that havenât logged in except for the day they first logged in
Quite honestly I think that goes against the whole point of Portal. We are supposed to be empowering our Cadets and with that in mind as far as Iâm concerned the responsibility for briefing parents lies with the Cadets not the Staff.
This will all be covered by the informed consent piece of work that has started. The concept is currently with MOD Legal before we do anything else. If they agree with our approach, then we can start building a technical solution.
This would essentially be:
Cadet bids for place or adds their name on Cadet Portal for a high risk event i.e. AT, LFMT, FMST etc
Parent/guardian is sent a secure link to their registered email address and/or mobile number
Parent clicks link and views the event - they will be supplied with everything they need to make an informed decision about whether or not to grant consent
The parent will take a positive action to give consent by clicking on something - they will also have the opportunity to provide further information as appropriate
The link will remain live up to the point of the event in case they want to withdraw their consent
For fringe cases where the parent/guardian doesnât have email/internet/mobile phone (which is going to be increasingly less likely over time), a TG21 can still be issued - but this should be the exception to the rule
After consent is granted, SMS is updated including the nominal roll to indicate if consent has been given and display any further information provided. The event commander can print (if they wish) the nominal roll and then check that against the cadets to turn out for the event - anyone that doesnât have consent is turned away.
For low risk events:
We would update the RAF F3822A to include a list of events that are considered to be low risk and the parentâs consent would be recorded on that form - no further consent would be required for each speciifc event because they will provide consent on the form.
When a cadet adds their name or bids for a place for a low risk event, the parent will be sent a link which they can click which will display all of the event information
If they wish to withdraw consent for that specific event, they will need to speak to the unit staff directly
We will reissue the RAF F3822A for all current cadets who will be required to have the form completed and signed and the fact that low risk consent has been granted by returning this form will be recorded somewhere on SMS.
None of this has been agreed yet and we are not moving a muscle on the development side until they are on board. Command Board are all happy with this approach. If MOD Legal say no (and they have in the past), then we will seek advice from them about what would be acceptable.
The goal is to significantly reduce the use of TG21 as much as we can for a whole range of reasons.
No, we want them to login to Cadet Portal to get the information they need.
Agree, this is required and we are aware.
Thatâs an interesting one - I will feed that back as you shouldnât be able to set a deadline > event date. Have raised a task to look into this.
This really comes down to effective comms about who is going to be selecting cadets or notâŚ
HummmâŚthatâs an interesting one and I donât disagree. Remember, it is up to the unit to decide what their cadets see or not. If there are units that are not advertising thing, that is a local line management issue. The Command Board including all of the RCs have just been issued with reports which detail exactly which units are advertising things to Cadet Portal or not - we will be making these visible to everyone shortly.
This is already in place. So if the cadet has engaged with the event and added their name, it appears on My Events automatically. On the right hand side are all of the events that have been added recently or modified in the last 7 days.
We donât have any plans to replicate the events dashboard onto the homepage.
Why do you think parents give their children to us to look after - It is to get them out of their bedrooms off of their games consoles and meet other real human beings and toâŚVenture Adventure. They trust us to do stuff safely no further checks surely
Indeed - which is why we want to introduce a policy that basically eliminates the need for paper-based consent forms and provide a technical solution that makes it easy for them to provide that consent and withdraw it as required.
If you have young children in 2020, you will likely already be familiar with this through the school systems. I have a five and one year old. When the school want to take him on a trip which is considered to be high risk, they send us all of the information through an app and we provide consent. If they want to take him off site but to something low risk, they just tell us they are doing that because we have already provided consent.
All we have to do then is list those activities on the 3822A along with flying, strenuous sporting and adventure training activities which get signed off by parents on the cadets first night.
The scouts employ a similar system to what James is putting forward. Generally, consent is assumed by the very nature of the parents consenting to their child joining the scouts, but for high risk activities and ones that morally/ethically some people may have issue with, the scouts require explicit consent.
