COMMUNITY
ON ISSUE WITH THE JOB OF SCSO
‘One White Charger’ by Warrant Officer Dave Layton, SCSO, Happy Valley
W
hen it was suggested that I might like to pen an article on ‘A day in the life of the Service
Community Support Officer (SCSO)’, I thought it might be easy but, as I reflected on how my days varied so much and then on the diversity of the role on other units, depending on the needs of the Station, so the article became more tricky. Stop, stop, if I focus my efforts on the title, I will not have sufficient space for all my words!
A good starting point is to list some of the tasks covered in our generic Terms of Reference:
• Act as a two-way channel of communication for Service personnel and their families.
• Where welfare needs are identified, signpost to the appropriate welfare agency.
• Assist with the operation of the nominated ‘Point of Contact’ system for those deployed on Ops.
• Work closely with other community- orientated personnel on the Unit to offer a community-focused delivery of resources for all to access.
• Work closely with the Station Warrant Officer to ensure the interests of the single living-in community are represented to Station management.
These are just some of the areas where the SCSO is involved on your Unit. However, as is always the case with most terms of reference, the last line on the list reads: ‘And any other tasks as directed by your Line Manager’. In my experience this last requirement can be very focussed and very time-consuming. Suffice to say, as long as it has a community connotation then it falls within the SCSO’s remit (somewhere)!
One huge task, not mentioned above, is to provide the interface between you, the customer, and the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) in all matters relating to Service Families Accommodation (SFA). The Job Description states that we are ‘To act as
‘champion’ for the SFA community’, which sounds very grand. Our White Chargers are issued on inventory when we take up post!
A Thesaurus offers the following alternatives for ‘champion’: defender, supporter, backer, campaigner, advocate, guardian. Any of which, I believe, are more in keeping with what it is that we do rather than what immediately springs to mind using the word Champion – winner, victor or title holder (does the egg and spoon race in Infant School count?).
If you have a problem or issue with DIO, or their sub-contractors, the SCSO can usually assist, as long as you have progressed the issue as far as you can through the normal channels. In other words, once you have exhausted all avenues in place to assist, we can try to get you over the hurdles that continue to stand in your way.
Recent examples of this were the problems encountered when the Housing Allocation Service Centre (HASC) was set up at Thetford and Aldershot to take over from the seven Housing Information Centres (HICs). The problems were not the sole experience of you the customer, but were also encountered by the staff at the Centres who were frustrated as the computer system failed, the Electronic-1132 (application) failed, the telephone system was not as it should have been and consequential staffing issues arose.
Saddle-up the White Charger, here the SCSOs came to the fore. Using all their experience and networking contacts many issues were resolved. More importantly, lessons were learned and changes were made.
WO Joe Lambley-Steel 42 Envoy Autumn 2012
The Self-Preference system has been in existence for some time now and things have settled down, although there are still ‘pinch- points’ in certain areas of the country, easily identified as the SCSOs in those locations
www.raf-ff.org.uk
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