3 minute read
NEW! Education matters
Education Matters
In this new regular, we aim to cover hot topics within therapy training and share success stories
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Aforeword by FHT’s CEO, Monica
Price, who also invites those involved in therapy training to tell her ‘What matters to YOU right now’?
Education matters is the perfect title for this new section of the magazine because education really does matter. It’s exactly what underpins best practice in the next generation of therapists, as well as postgraduates looking to expand their skillset.
Even as someone not directly involved in education, I know that the pandemic has had a huge impact on therapy training providers and therapy training standards. Lockdowns and government restrictions have meant empty training couches for months on end, followed by limitations on the number of students that can be safely taught in one class. It’s meant additional costs, to ensure appropriate COVID-19 measures are met. It’s meant apprentices being let go by salons that have had to close their doors or couldn’t afford to keep them on. We’ve also seen a really worrying surge in online courses for highly practical skills and this is a worry in an industry that is mostly unregulated.
While these are obviously bigger issues we need to address as an industry moving forward, we do also have to celebrate some of the positives that have happened in the world of therapy education, despite COVID. This includes the launch of a new apprenticeship in Wellbeing and Holistic Therapy, for which I’d like to say a big thank you to FHT Vice Presidents, Gerri Moore and Judith Hadley, who helped to develop this alongside other industry stakeholders. And we are also starting to see an increase in the number of CPD courses and webinars that focus on making therapy services more inclusive. I’m proud to say that FHT ran two Unconscious Bias webinars, available to both FHT members and staff, in January 2021, and Ana Bott, FHT’s Inclusive Therapist of the Year 2021, has co-written and lectures on the world’s first LGBTQ+ inclusive healthcare course for manual therapists (look out for more information about Ana’s work in a future issue of IT).
But what I really want to know is, what does it look like on the ground? From the inside? If you’re involved in therapy education, what’s important to you right now? Is there anything as a professional association we can do to help support you and your students? I can’t make any promises but I’d certainly appreciate your candid feedback and if it’s in FHT’s power to help you with something, we will. At the end of the day, we all have a vested interest in making sure the public have access to the very best therapists this industry has to offer.
And please share your success stories with us, too. We want to know about students and staff who have excelled and gained recognition for their achievements. About new training premises being built or extended. About new partnerships and projects getting underway, where your students are supporting people or businesses in their local community to gain valuable experience.
Or maybe you’d like to see something else on this page, that I haven’t mentioned. Please get in touch with me at mprice@fht.org.uk writing ‘Education matters’ in the subject box and let me know what matters to you. T
My favourite teaching quote...
From Monica Price
Have your favourite quote featured here by emailing it to editor@fht. org.uk Please write ‘my favourite teaching quote’ in the subject box and tell us who the quote is by, in the body of your email.
