The Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners (JCCP) has set out an ambitious plan for 2023 designed to promote the health and safety, and protection of members of the public. It plans to further design and implement high standards of performance and practice among non-surgical cosmetic practitioners and hair restoration surgeons. It will do this by including the definition, creation and maintenance of an effective structure to inform the standard of professional education and training among non-surgical cosmetic practitioners and hair restoration surgeons as an integral component of the Government’s proposed licensing scheme for England. It is the Council’s intention to work in close alliance with the Cosmetic Practice Standards Authority (CPSA) to update and extend both our current practice and education and training standards in alignment with new standards of expected to be set by the Department of Health and Social Care within the next 18 months.
JCCP practitioner registrants and approved qualifications, education and training provider organisations are recognised, approved, and registered by the JCCP in line with Professional Standards Authority (PSA) and JCCP/CPSA accredited standards. For practitioner registrants this requires evidence of the possession of relevant knowledge, experience or qualifications leading to core and modality specific competency as set out by the JCCP’s sister body the CPSA in its practice standards (CPSA, 2018) and by the JCCP’s Competency Framework (JCCP, 2018), adherence to a published Code of Practice and Standards set out by the JCCP/CPSA (JCCP and CPSA, 2020), good character, compliance with premises/infection control/health protection standards and possession of adequate insurance and indemnity cover in relation to treatments provided. The JCCP has also decided to continue to offer free membership to those persons who are insured with Hamilton Fraser for a further period of 2 years. All registered healthcare practitioners who have ‘Professional Indemnity Insurance’ with Hamilton Fraser will be offered the opportunity to ‘opt in’ and join the JCCP Practitioner Register (subject to an agreed set of additional criteria related to JCCP standards).
» The JCCP will continue to work closely with its appointed key opinion leaders and with its corporate partners to build on a shared commitment to ‘to enhance patient safety and public protection within the aesthetics sector «
The JCCP continues to function as a productive and influential charitable organisation and has engaged regularly with the UK government, government agencies, professional statutory regulatory bodies, other regulators, membership associations, insurance companies, pharma companies, pharmacies and professional organisations in order to determine and publish guidelines on how to work safely, ethically, professionally, and legally within the aesthetics sector. The Council also meets regularly with the British Beauty Council (and its a˄liate members, such as Habia, British Association of Beauty Therapy and Cosmetology (BABTAC) and the National Hair and Beauty Federation (NHBF)) to discuss and share opinion and advice with the aim of co-authoring and developing a range a position papers as part of a pre-consultative exercise that is designed to inform and influence the government’s proposed licencing scheme for the non-surgical cosmetic sector in England. This work will focus on a wide range of cosmetic procedures as well as the products, devices, machines and medicines used in their transaction.
The anticipated Department of Health and Social Care licence for non-surgical cosmetic practice is reported to include the need for all practitioners who provide procedures that may be included in the scope of the licence to demonstrate that they have achieved a minimum standard of education and training (which is yet to be determined following public consultation next year). The JCCP regards this to be essential to ensure patient safety, and thus should be a central pillar of a future licensing regime. The JCCP published a ‘Good Practice Guide’ last year that in part supports achieving minimum standards in education and training for providers, and furthermore the competence of individuals thereof. It also sets out the JCCP’s expectations regarding ethical and accurate advertising of training courses in the sector. The guide differentiates between pre-qualifying training courses (designed for practitioners to acquire the requisite knowledge and practice competencies to perform non-surgical procedures both safely and effectively) and short courses and CPD courses.
The Council has also called for the government to recognise the importance of prior learning and practice experience for those professionals who have already acquired significant experience of practising in the aesthetics sector and who also possess evidence of having undertaken equivalent levels of education and training that will align with the new education and training standards once they have been mandated by the Department of Health and Social Care. For these reasons the JCCP’s Education and Training Committee has approved Learna in association with the University of South Wales and both Cosmetic Courses and the Harley Academy to operate and deliver JCCP Approved Assessment Centres in support of its ‘fast track’ scheme for registered healthcare practitioners as agreed with the PSA. The fast track assessment centre is delivered in strict accordance with JCCP Education and Training Committee policy guidelines and commitment to providing this alternative route to achieving full membership status to the JCCP Practitioner Register. The JCCP also recognises ‘equivalence’ of the GMC Plastic Surgery and the Dermatology Specialist Register qualifications against the JCCP Competency Framework with the result that equivalence has been formally approved with these two educational frameworks. In addition, the JCCP has engaged with the British College of Aesthetic Medicine (BCAM) this year to formally approve and endorse the BCAM Knowledge/Theoretical and Practical examination components of their membership examination and has confirmed its alignment/equivalence to the JCCP Competency Framework (JCCP, 2018). During 2022, the JCCP Education and Training Committee also approved and endorsed the equivalence of a new grandparenting scheme for existing BCAM members.
The JCCP will continue to work closely with its appointed key opinion leaders and with its corporate partners to build on a shared commitment ‘to enhance patient safety and public protection within the aesthetics sector and to work together to bring stakeholders together to unite around key safety/policy themes’. Shared activities during 2023 will include major campaigns to develop models of robust evidence-based shared governance and co-production to improve public protection, patient safety, the promotion of evidence-based practice and activity data collection/audit. It will also raise awareness of key patient safety issues regarding the sector with the public and, practitioners and education/training providers. The JCCP will continue to work closely with sk:n, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) and the British Beauty Council with the aim of engaging with relevant government agencies and professional regulators to assist in the codesign and implementation of a new system of regulatory reform for the aesthetics sector within the UK.
Box 1.KEY PRIORITIES for 2023
- The JCCP will be actively and fully engaged in the Department of Health and Social Care public consultation licensing process
- The JCCP will continue to operate its PSA approved Practitioner Register under the same terms and conditions as currently used (free membership and agreed auditing arrangements with the Practitioner Register Committee and the PSA)
- The JCCP will further develop its education and training register for providers and qualifications in association with Department of Health and Social Care proposals for the design and implementation of a new licensing scheme in England
- The JCCP’s clinical advisory group will continue to work with the CPSA and key partners to develop new and revised standards to assist in the design of a new and responsive model for licensing
- The JCCP will develop and publish a new narrative statement that supports and reinforces its strategic objectives over the next 3 years
- The JCCP will continue to build on those areas where it is seen as having a major strategic role in the sector – influencing members of the public, government, regulators and other stakeholders, complaints handling, standard setting, licencing and education and training
- The Council will expand and develop the JCCP&me consumer/public facing website to further raise consumer awareness of risk associated with the higher level/invasive procedures
- The JCCP will call for a clearer definition regarding medical, medically related and cosmetic procedural interventions
- Priority will be given to grow and develop the JCCP corporate membership scheme for commercial partners in the aesthetics sector
- The Council will campaign for the full implementation of the JCCP 10 Point Plan.
The JCCP has set out plans to continue its partnership with the Aesthetic Complications Expert Group World (ACE) to promote best practice and standards in the aesthetic industry. This will further the shared commitment to public protection and consumer safety/awareness and call for the design and implementation of nationally agreed process for the reporting and analysis of complications and adverse incidents.
More specifically, the JCCP’s strategic plan will seek to encourage the Government to address and introduce additional measures to supplement the proposed licensing system in England:
- ►The need for extended powers to be given to the CQC to inspect all premises where invasive procedures that are included in the license are to be performed
- ►To seek an assurance that the CQC will develop a memorandum of understanding with local authority licensing organisations to perform an integrated and enhanced scheme of regulation for aesthetics to avoid duplication for those health professionals who are already registered with the CQC
- ►To call for the implementation of a national register of approved qualifications and of approved education and training providers
- ►To consider whether the PSA could be given extended powers to oversee registers of approved education and training providers and qualifications in the sector in addition to their current statutory function of overseeing practitioner registers
- ►Ofqual to be requested to ensure that they only approve qualifications in the future that meet the new Government standard for education and training for the aesthetics sector
- ►Dermal fillers to become a prescription only device – to be agreed with the MHRA
- ►To request the minister to write to all professional regulatory bodies who have responsibility for prescribing to seek assurance that they will enforce guidance to ensure that all prescribers do not perform remote prescribing in the aesthetics sector
- ►National, mandatory education and training standards to be introduced for all practitioners who practise in the industry
- ►The legal enforcement of the requirement for all practitioners to have an appropriate level of medical indemnity insurance and to provide a transparent redress scheme for service users
- ►National scrutiny and action to prevent the promotion through social media of unsafe, unethical and exaggerated messaging about products, education, training and aesthetic service provision.
One key area of activity for the Council’s clinical advisory group (CAG) this year will be to prepare a range of consensus papers on issues to inform the pre-consultation phase of the proposed Department of Health and Social Care licencing scheme public consultation exercise that will commence in the Spring of 2023. These papers have been produced by CAG in collaboration with a range of partner organisations regarding the procedures to be included in the proposed Department of Health and Social Care licence in England. These papers will focus on the provision of advice to inform the application of a revised framework of procedural standards (that will build on CPSA, HEE and JCCP existent standards). As part of this work the JCCP will also advise further on ‘borderline surgical procedures’ which will merit further scrutiny. CAG will also work with colleagues to identify a range of medicines, products, devices and ‘machines’ that are currently unregulated within the aesthetics sector and which present potential harm to members of the public when they are used/applied in the absence of more stringent controls and oversight.