JCCP announces two voluntary registers

The Joint Council of Cosmetic Practitioners (JCCP), an independent regulatory body for the cosmetic medicine sector led by the British Association of Cosmetic Nurses (BACN), has agreed on two voluntary registers for practitioners of non-surgical aesthetic treatments such as injectables.

The first will be a list of approved education, training and accreditation providers; and the second a list of JCCP registered practitioners who meet its education, clinical and practice standards.

This second register will be divided into two parts, essentially medics and non medics. Part one is described as those who deliver non-surgical treatments and are registered with professional statutory bodies including the General Medical Council (GMC) and General Dental Council (GDC), and part two those not registered with these bodies but who meet the JCCP’s standards and work under oversight of a clinical professional where required.

“It has been a huge task to get so many stakeholders in the non-surgical aesthetics sector together and to reach a consensus,” said JCCP interim chair Professor David Sines.

“[The registers] will be able to identify to the public practitioners and training providers who will work to the newly agreed set of educational, clinical and practice standards and within the JCCP Code of Practice.”

This news comes after register Save Face withdrew from working with the JCCP because the council agreed to allow beauty therapists to sit on its board and input into the parameters.

Beauty professionals have been vocal on the subject. Frank Chamberlain, owner of Amber Health, Beauty and Sports Injury Clinic in Plymouth, welcomed the new registers as “an excellent and commendable approach”, adding: “Anything that raises the status and professionalism of the beauty profession is to be applauded.”

Others welcomed the opportunity to differentiate between different levels of therapists. “Unlike the majority of doctors and dentists who have been trained through the NHS to a recognised structure, the term beauty therapist embraces a hotch potch of experience and qualifications,” said Geraldine Walters, owner of Geraldine Walters Advanced Skincare in Norfolk.