Rigorous regulation

The personal care sector has a duty to ensure clients receive the highest level of expertise, which can be gained by way of formal, regulated education, explains VTCT’s Melo Ruswa

The personal care sector is quickly becoming one of the nation’s biggest industries. In fact, beauty queries were among the most searched terms on Google during the most recent lockdown earlier this year, reinforcing just how in demand this industry is. While many regulated qualifications exist in this sector, there is currently no statutory requirement for most practitioners to hold any formal qualifications to practise. This means that therapists, ranging from nail techs to those injecting fillers, can operate legally without any formal training.

What is a regulated qualification?

Regulation ensures that qualifications are sufficiently valid, reliable and trusted. This is done by setting out the rules and parameters that awarding organisations must be compliant with when designing, delivering and awarding regulated qualifications.

The role of an awarding body like VTCT is to design qualifications that fit the needs of the relevant sector, and to develop assessment methods that ensure that learner attainment and knowledge is measured fairly and accurately against the demands of the industry.

What are the benefits of a regulated qualification?

A regulated qualification has benefits for everyone; from training providers, consumers and learners, to awarding bodies themselves. Regulators require awarding bodies to review approved qualifications frequently to verify that they are still fit for purpose. This is because techniques that may have been relevant a couple of years ago quickly become outdated, meaning that passionate, highly skilled and well-intentioned practitioners may be unwittingly left with gaps in their knowledge. If a practitioner is not wholly equipped with a robust understanding of the industry, including any new advancements, this could lead to a dissatisfied customer or, worse still, unsafe practices.

‘A regulated qualification has benefits for everyone; from training providers, consumers and learners, to awarding bodies themselves’

The process of reviewing qualifications against the requirements set out on a continuous basis ensures that qualifications are always at the cutting edge of new advancements, and evolve at the same pace as industries that are constantly innovating. This gives peace of mind to not only the client receiving treatment, but also to training providers and awarding bodies that have the duty to provide future professionals with the skill set they need to flourish.

As well as this, a regulated qualification gives learners reassurance that they are equipped with all the skills they need to excel. Being entrusted by clients to achieve their beauty goals can be a daunting responsibility for a new practitioner; the quality mark of a regulated qualification provides an extra boost of confidence, as it shows that learners have been thoroughly evaluated, assessed and qualityassured to be deemed competent, skilled and knowledgeable.

What are the risks of an unregulated qualification?

A lack of standardisation within unregulated qualifications means there is no threshold for what constitutes adequate learning or robust course content and assessment. Essentially, there is no obligation for anyone to ‘check the checkers’ and scrutinise qualifications.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made the ever-changing needs of the personal care sector particularly stark. Close contact services have had to adapt rapidly to a brand new phenomenon and, in turn, so have qualifications. Rigorous regulation of qualifications means that both learners and clients can be assured that their treatments are delivered in the safest way especially during uncertain times.

Vocational Training Charitable Trust (VTCT) is a specialist awarding and assessment organisation with a number of centres throughout Ireland and the UK.