This is such good welcome news, cadets returning back to parade nights can only be good thing for their mental and physical wellbeing. As the member of a Civcomm I have seen first hand how inactive they have become and getting them out of the house will be a challenge and for some getting them to trust the outside world will be a challenge.
I know it’s not the remit of sqn leaders to over concern themselves with this a cadets mental health, but they should be mindful that these young people have been secluded in their houses and the most they have seen of the outside world is through a window.
I look forward to sqn’s returning and the good things that it will bring.
It is - in fact it is within the remit of all CFAV. And whilst we are limited in what we can do - we are not mental health trained - providing some structure and normality to our Cadets, as far as we can, will go a long way to help.
respectfully this is as relevant for the Staff as it is the Cadets - some staff have been forced in to Furlough or maybe even lost their employment. they may have even been WFH while juggling home schooling.
although we serve the organisation for the benefit of the Cadets, this hasn’t just been an issue unique to the Cadets - staff are just as likely/if not more so to have suffered mental health wobbles
I know I have. With this coming hot on the back of my return to work after mental health long term sick. I can’t wait to get back to seeing the cadets and my fellow CFAVs
That is so true, and my post was not in anyway demonstrative towards any member of staff or volunteers and civcomm’s mental health, it was purley highlighting that many young people have not even been outside the house in months, for any reason. It is that could have a negative role in their mental and physical health. Bringing back face-face parade nights is probably the best news that could happen to them in the last 5-months.
In relation to staff and volunteers mental health, in my personal opinion it is how they are going to be supported, both short-term and long-term is something that each sqn staff, volunteers and civcomm members support them throught this time, how that is done is something that everyone should be mindful of.
Perhaps this is something that should be more widely spoken about at all levels of RAFAC, as without the staff (irrespective of rank), voluntueers and covcomm, their would be no cadets.
That is not the attitude that anyone should adopt. Ignoring a medical condition, whether mental or physical won’t make it go away, it will just fester away, until one day, out of the blue it will show it’s self in a way that you would never have expected, I can guarantee it will not be for the better and it will affect your entire family.
The next thing that needs to be done is to find out how we can bring this into every squadron where everyone irrestective of rank or possition can without predudice or judgement access a talking service, even if it is something we start up ourselves.
I am so glad that more people what to promote mental health, and it is something everyone should be mindful of. Going back to my original reply, I was trying emphasise that young people have been very isolated and the only communication they have had with the outside world was through a PC or mobile device. It is great to see on here what sqn’s will be doing to bring cadets together and it has encouraged me to try and do more to support everyone.
It is somewhat silly to suggest that youngsters have been just communicating by PC and mobile devices. Our local park and what I have seen over the last few weeks is anything to go by suggests this line of thinking is somewhat gauche.
The other thing it suggests is that cadets don’t have any mates outside the ATC and or are unable to entertain themselves, unless it’s being organised for them by us. God help us all for the future if this is the case.
Some teenagers might be doing that but I can guarantee you that not all of them are. Some will be desperate to return because cadets was their social space.
As pessimistic as you are there are still a lot of things we can offer that the park does not. We wouldn’t have lasted 80 odd years if not. Today’s teenagers aren’t fundamentally different to other generations even if the technology has changed.
I see the sqn as place for wider social interaction between kids from different schools and communities. This was my experience as a cadet and I see this as probably the greatest contribution we and other youth groups can provide to the wider society.
I had a group of mates where we all grew up together totally unconnected to air cadets and on balance spent more time ‘socially’ with these than I did with people from air cadets, as the latter was on an organised basis and it wouldn’t have worked easily for us all to get together ad hoc., no mobiles, instawhatsbook or even household telephones, you’d go round and knock to see if they can come out or you’d just meet up randomly.
I think it’s a little narrow-minded to suggest our longevity has anything to do with what we offer. There were and are thousands of groups offering things to youngsters and these have been in existence longer than us. However WW2 did us a favour, had we not got the govts support during WW2 and then after, we would have just been another thing for kids to join. This is waht we have become and now we have effectively lost our absolute uniqueness in terms of what we offer, which I think kept us going longer as a distinct thing, we are now just one a cluster of organisations basically offering the same things and the kids choose. This invariably comes down to fitting things in. I can’t have been the only person to have been on different squadrons with cadets who do 2 or more things? Then wionder how do they fit everything in? There are members of staff who are involved in different things, not just Air Cadets and I am one of them.
When I was a cadet, there were cadets in Scouts, Boys Brigade, played football, rugby, cricket, tennis and several swam for the local club and one I remember was track cyclist, even in the 70s he had a bike that weighed very, very, very little and tyres that were tiny.
Why do you need to be creative? Up until our ‘local’ group were 15 or 16, having a kick-a-round, knockabout cricket, going out on our bikes, going swimming among other things, never got boring. You were out having a laugh. Going out on our bikes as we got older resulted in some spur of the moment rides of up to 70 miles, in a time when once we were out we were not contactable and invariably little money between us. if we’d planned it we’d never have done them. We’d plan to go to one place we knew about, get their quicker than we thought and go somewhere else etc, until we decided to turn round.
Maybe it’s because of this I don’t see it as a mission to organise the lives of cadets to within an inch of their lives with an almost constant set of activities, courses et al.
Yep, but as long as we accept we’re no more than any other group like us where we bring together kids from different schools and parts of the local area.
There seems to be an undertone that people are looking at organising things for their own ends “I’m looking forward to …” being a key phrase or sentiment, that suggests they want to do it more than potentially the cadets do. All we should be doing is organising something and if cadets want to do it so be it. That’s the basis I’m working on. The only thing we’ve picked up from the cadets is they want to see others face to face, which given modern methods you’d have thought they be able to do without our intervention, if they and or their parents are happy to do so in the current climate. Not being funny if they wanted to go for a walk, they don’t need us.