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If you don't think you can quite make the committment to being adult staff, there's always the Civilian Welfare Committee (CWC). This is a group of people that usually have current or previous links with the ATC (although it's not necessary to know anything about the organisation), such as parents, former staff members, parents of ex-cadets, or even people with no connection to the Air Training Corps.

Each and every Squadron has its own associated Civilian Welfare Committee. There is a minimum of 5 members to any "Civ Com", and there must be a Chairman, Treasurer and Secretary as well as the CO and the Squadron Padre (both ex-officio members). The CWC is responsible for overseeing the initial unit formation and direction. The committees also manage finances (in particular fund raising) but do not have any executive authority.

The RAF budget includes "public funds" for the ATC, that's money from taxes allocated by the government. This pays for things like Flying and Shooting. However, Squadrons are required to support whatever other activities they do themselves, by raising "non-public" funds. Newbury is one of the lucky squadrons; we attend horse shows, doing car parking and helping with jumps; we attend the National Rifle Association's home at Bisley, marking targets for civilian shooters, and get paid for doing so. We put this towards the cost of running our own minibus, purchasing training equipment for our cadets and saving towards a future minibus. This is where the CWC comes in.

Meetings are held once every 3 months, usually on a parade night. The committee then decide how the "non-public funds" is spent. This may be in the form of helping a cadet go on an activity they wouldn't normally be able to afford or it could be a request for funding from squadron staff to purchase new equipment. As the name suggests, they are responsible for the welfare of a unit, and although they have no say over the day-to-day running of the unit (that's done by the Squadron Commander and other staff).

If you want to know more about what your son or daughter gets up to twice weekly and most weekends, and you've got a few hours every 3 months to spare, contact us to find out more.