National Service

I can see the value in something like the Civil Defence Corps.  Have a nucleus of permanent staff, and top up with volunteers and national service trainees. Train them in basic first aid, radio communications, rescue skills and how to deal with civil emergencies such as floods.  Link it to an NVQ so they get a qualification. Give the option of staying on as a volunteer and learn additional transferable skills. As with the TA, have an annual retainer and pay for days on duty, weekend training etc.

Encourage volunteering with HM Coastguard, RNLI, Mountain Rescue, RVS, Red Cross, St John Ambulance etc. to meet the required number of service hours.

At the same time, encourage schools to start CCF and support voluntary youth organisations working with younger kids - there are Scouts, Brigades, St John Ambulance, Red Cross, Police and Fire Cadets and loads of other voluntary youth organisations that offer structured programmes and need resources and leaders. Count service as leaders with such organisations as meeting the requirement.

Have a military option, but make it something useful ... not square bashing and busywork like some of the stories about the old National Service personnel painting coal white etc.. I am thinking something along the lines of the old TA / Home Guard who, in an emergency, could guard airfields and barracks and release more qualified service personnel for active duty. Again, this could include SIA training so that they could work as security guards on completion of their training commitment. I remember the military who supported the security at the London Olympic Games - this could be handled by National Service personnel with regular miltiary NCOs supervising. 

Young people with appropriate skills - and that could include some of our neurodivergent youngsters - could be involved in an apprenticeship  with the security services to tackle cyber crime and terrorism, possibly leading to permanent employment.

Whats CCF and SIA?

What about those of us who don't do groups and teamwork? The ideas that you've come up with fill me with horror, I know I was brought up by someone who would never allow me do somethig where I had to wear a uniform, but the idea of all this militaristic structured training just seems weird!

Arn't there already things like The Duke Of Edinburgh Awards that do all this stuff with young people?

I'm dubious about things like making young people do things like search and rescue, will they be given the right equipment to enable them to do it? Or will it be another cash burden on financially over stretched parents? Will the state pick up the tab for young people in care?

You're obviously a person who enjoys group/team work and see's the value in it, I'm the opposite and I think it would either put me into melt down or engage my fight/flight responses to such a degree that it would be seriously harmful to me and those around me, I'd probably oscilate between fighting, fleeing and meltdowns.

Some of my personal development came from "feeling the fear and doing it anyway."  When I did a stress management course, the participants were managers, social workers, psychologists ... and their most common anxiety was giving presentation, speaking in public. "  My first public speaking was reading the lesson in church at the age of eight ..   Nobody knew that I was autistic ... "Everybody gets anxious the first time - you will be OK."  I was, and it got easier, Baby steps ... presentations at Scouts, the Debating Society at school ... giving a presentation at a team meeting ... deliver an hour's lecture without notes ...  "  Feel the fear and do it anyway. I now know that the treatment for anxiety and phobias using cognitive behavioural methods is to slowly desensitise oneself.  Doing this as kids, whilst our brains are at their maximum plasticity, makes sense.

Talking of reading the lesson in church, one of the boys in Scouts was dyslexic. He memorised the reading and delivered it flawlessly. Those of us who knew respected him ... he could have just made an excuse, but he had the guts to put in the extra effort and do it anyway.

It's like the first time I tried abseiling. I was attached to a rope at the edge of a twenty foot drop. I still remember leaning back until I was vertical, and taking the first step down the wall. A mixture of terror, adrenaline rush and the inner voice telling me to trust my training.   Next it was being in a  parachute being towed behind a Land Rover at four hundred feet ... that was exciting.  I am still not happy climbing ladders, though!  What I have learnt from my time in Scouts and Cadets is 5P - Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance. Do your planning and risk assessment, feel the anxiety and just do it.

According to Vygotsky, learning happens at the "zone of proximal development" which is just at the edge of our comfort zone, where our arousal and attention is maximised just before it leads to stress and meltdown. For those of us with ADHD, that is our happy space.

According to scientists, a bumble bee ought not to be able to fly. It is aerodynamically impossible. But nobody told the bee, so he just does it anyway.

Some of my personal development came from "feeling the fear and doing it anyway."  When I did a stress management course, the participants were managers, social workers, psychologists ... and their most common anxiety was giving presentation, speaking in public. "  My first public speaking was reading the lesson in church at the age of eight ..   Nobody knew that I was autistic ... "Everybody gets anxious the first time - you will be OK."  I was, and it got easier, Baby steps ... presentations at Scouts, the Debating Society at school ... giving a presentation at a team meeting ... deliver an hour's lecture without notes ...  "  Feel the fear and do it anyway. I now know that the treatment for anxiety and phobias using cognitive behavioural methods is to slowly desensitise oneself.  Doing this as kids, whilst our brains are at their maximum plasticity, makes sense.

Talking of reading the lesson in church, one of the boys in Scouts was dyslexic. He memorised the reading and delivered it flawlessly. Those of us who knew respected him ... he could have just made an excuse, but he had the guts to put in the extra effort and do it anyway.

It's like the first time I tried abseiling. I was attached to a rope at the edge of a twenty foot drop. I still remember leaning back until I was vertical, and taking the first step down the wall. A mixture of terror, adrenaline rush and the inner voice telling me to trust my training.   Next it was being in a  parachute being towed behind a Land Rover at four hundred feet ... that was exciting.  I am still not happy climbing ladders, though!  What I have learnt from my time in Scouts and Cadets is 5P - Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance. Do your planning and risk assessment, feel the anxiety and just do it.

According to Vygotsky, learning happens at the "zone of proximal development" which is just at the edge of our comfort zone, where our arousal and attention is maximised just before it leads to stress and meltdown. For those of us with ADHD, that is our happy space.

According to scientists, a bumble bee ought not to be able to fly. It is aerodynamically impossible. But nobody told the bee, so he just does it anyway.

For me, having cPTSD, theres no such thing as good adreniline, only bad. I have done things that I've feared, but not really anything physical, I'm to clumsy and weird prone for things like abseiling to be a good idea. I'd be more likely to do a Boris Johnson and end up stuck, or in my case I'd probably end up upside down or the harness would come loose. That happened to me once on a fairground ride, I was bouncing around screaming and it was ages before they realised I wasn't screaming for fun, there was really something wrong. WIth my balance issues anything with heights is a bad idea and I'm terribly unco-ordinated, I swim like a brick too, I think even if I had a bouyancy aid on I'd somehow end up with it back to front and it would force my face under water.

Neither of my schools did any of the things you've described. Oddly enough I'm quite good at public speaking as long as I know my topic, the most difficult audience was the Womens Institute where I did a talk and demo of Indian Head Massage, they were so unruly and kept whispering to each other, I wonder if they were going to start passing notes! My family were never church goers so I never learnt to do anything there and I wasn't allowed to go to brownies or guides or anything like that.

I often wonder where these people get these ideas about stress and anxiety from, I wonder if they've ever suffered from it themselves, like all this people work best under stress stuff, I think it's utter testicles! Get a load of experts together and you can guarantee they'll come up with a load of stuff that either obvious or total nonsense that becomes gospel and no ones allowed to point out obvious errors or exceptions without becoming some kind of heretic at worst or spolisport at best. I know I've been that heretical spoilsport on numerous occaisions!

I don't have a problem with bees being able to fly, although I admit they do look like they shouldn't be able too. But then I dont' have a problem with quite a few things science says are impossible.

Maybe I was kept to safe as a child and not challenged enough or in the right way or encouraged for that matter, it's odd I dont' remember every being encouraged to do anything. I remember being told off for things I couldn't do and for something I could do but supposedly shouldn't, but never being encouraged.

Anyway enough of that this whole conversations giving me the heebie jeebies