Good practice guide for education and training providers

There is considerable variation in the approach that cosmetic industry education and training providers take to promoting courses and the type of courses they offer students. The Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners (JCCP) has recently produced a ‘good practice’ guide to support education and training providers in the sector and those aesthetic practitioners who seek to further develop their knowledge, skills and competencies.

The JCCP has developed this guide with the full knowledge that the Department of Health and Social Care is yet to determine whether a nationally mandated standard for education and training should be introduced in England for those practitioners who provide the more invasive non-surgical cosmetic procedures.

The report on the impact of body image on mental and physical health recommends that there is a need for a minimum standard to be met in regard to the education and training of practitioners who perform non-surgical cosmetic procedures. It is essential to ensure patient safety, and this should be a central pillar of a future licensing regime (House of Commons and Health and Social Care Committee, 2022). This recommendation correlates and affirms recommendations of a similar nature made by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Beauty, Aesthetics and Wellbeing (2022) and also resonates with the principles contained in the Health and Care Act (2022) that relate to the design and implementation of a licensing scheme for the aesthetic sector in England.