Grassroots PT for CAP Officers

[DNall]

Fine then, your points are made. 

I hope none of you will advocate for a Senior PT program, because I am likely to fight you "on principle" because of this.

Sad that because I merely bring up a "grassroots" program that I would have loved to have lead and recommend to my unit, people find ways to make it bad!

Joe, you can do what you want locally. There are mass amounts of resources out there to work with. You need to use an existing program with its own administration that you can just quick ref. That was already stated.

Far as a broad national voluntary program, HSO is working on that, but they have to get theri own crap together first & there are legal issues they need hammered out with liability first, congress is working on that. I don't know what they plan to do in the meantime.

Any kind of mandatory program is worth discussing cause the people that won't participate in a voluntary program are the ones that need it most. How to do that is a whole big issue.

[Dragoon]

Chaplains & Finance officers, you missed legal officers in there too. Yes, hell yes, we should be taking care of our members. Those issues may be less prominant than being physically able to do the job, but certainly if you're home & work life is screwed & you're broke you aren't going to be able to volunteer much of your time.

But how much CAP time and resources should be devoted to these sort of periphery problems?  And what training will you eliminate to make room for these things?

Taking care of your people so they can do their job is not periphery, it's a primary leadership responsibility. The kinds of things that you pay attention to in CAP are slight different & perhaps more invasive & engaging than in the military, expressly because they volunteer their time & can leave at any point, so you have to be right on top of things & doing all you can for them. That's job number one above anything else required of a commander at any level.

Should we mandate that our Chaplains provide marital counseling?  Like they've got time for that.

Should we mandate that our legal officers provide free estate planning sessions to our members?  Like we've got enough legal officers for that!

Why exactly do we have chaplains? I do believe their number one duty is to minister to the needs of our members. Anything else we task them with (MLO or CISM for instance) is secondary. Free estate planning from legal officers? Probably they'd want to get paid for that, but free legal advice & referal, absolutely, and I would very much expect them to help members out on a pro bono basis from time to time.

It's a fixed-sum game. We have X volunteer hours to spend on our members - what are the priorities? 

Oh no it is not!!! See we got unlimited recruiting. If you need resources to take care of your members, your job as CC is to go get them. That takes priority over any report, program, activity, etc. A Sq CC is not the quarterback, he's the coach. You give your team the resources to be successful, and you manage & direct those resources so they can run the plays to your satisfaction. That's your number one responsibility.

Nice thoughts above, but completely unrealistic for the average unit.  Find me a unit that works this way.  Give me the names of the legal, finance and chaplains and I'll call 'em up to verify on how they are helping all the members of teh squadron with their personal, legal and financial matters.

This is pie in the sky stuff.  If our resources are unlimited, we'd have no problem being perfect in all that we do.  We ain't.  We ain't even close.

We only have so many resources.  Our members only have so many skills.

And "thinking big" without any realism leads to great disappointment.

As one commander of mine once said "A vision without resources is a hallucination."

Priorities must be set.

[DNall]

No I understand that. The priority is to go recruit the resources you need to take care of your people so they can be there & active in the capacity you need, otherwise the mission doesn't happen.

I caertainly can't do everything myself, but I'm working toward the goals stated witha staff that's reaching out for resources. I think what you'll find is most lawyers, accountants, chaplains, etc haven't ever been told that their first job is taking care of the people around them. I think if you told them that & helped them with some structure & limits that they'd be more than happy to help.

The priority for the people will be a combination of mission & personal. The priority of the commander will also, but his version has to skew slightly to the people so as to make mission accomplishment possible. If everyone takes a step back & tries to see the truth in that then you can reapproach & adjust the way we do things slightly to make a more successful organization & local unit. CAP organizationally just isn't & never will be about the people. CAP is about using people, using them to accomplish a mission, and from our retention rates over our entire history you can see that's never been about what you get in return, which is mostly somewhere between nothing & screwed. The only place that's going to take care of members is right there at Sq. Start delivering those resources & I'll bet you see a whoole new unit in just a few months.

I have some resources in my unit & we're recruiting now. I'm going to try to build to that. We'll see, but I don't think it's unrealistic, it's jsut a goal we haven't reached yet.

[RiverAux]

OK, what about officially publishing guidelines approved by CAP Health? 

Frankly, I don't have a whole lot of faith in CAP health services.  They never seem to get much accomplished and haven't been helpful to me in the past when I had questions regarding first aid requirements for ES.  That was a few years ago.  Maybe they've gotten better. 

[arajca]

OK, what about officially publishing guidelines approved by CAP Health? 

Frankly, I don't have a whole lot of faith in CAP health services.  They never seem to get much accomplished and haven't been helpful to me in the past when I had questions regarding first aid requirements for ES.  That was a few years ago.  Maybe they've gotten better. 

The first aid requirements for ES are properly addressed by the OPS folks, not HSO. The major problem occuring with the HSO program is the legal details. Bring common sense to the legal system, and we'd have a viable HSO program the next day. The basics and most of the details are already written. They're just being picked apart and rewritten by the lawyers. The HSO has tried to get the AF to provide protection for CAP medical personnel without success. Any actions I take place me at risk of lawsuit or loosing certifications. That is one reason I don't plan to be on a GT. Good Sam laws generally don't cover members (volunteer or paid) of a rescue organization functioning as such.