Free mental health training helps beauty pros spot client struggles
By Helena Biggs | 10 March 2021 | Movers & Shakers, News
Barber, Tom Chapman, has launched Hair&Beauty Talk; free mental health training to help hair and beauty professionals recognise signs of struggle amongst clients.
Chapman is founder of The Lions Barber Collective, an international group of barbers that have come together to help raise awareness for mental wellbeing and suicide prevention. Through the collective’s BarberTalk initiative, he has given mental health training to over 2000 hair professionals, and has now expanded his influence to the beauty sector.
“The obvious next step for us was to open the informative, enjoyable and – most importantly – useable training to the hair and beauty industry,” Tom comments.
“As a member of the advisory board for the British Beauty Council and through starting my career in hairdressing at Toni&Guy, I am aware that the hair & beauty industry holds a relationship of trust and intimacy with clients, as well as regular visits from them which puts [professionals] in the perfect space to be able to recognise if someone is struggling.”
The four-hour training, available on demand, helps hair and beauty pros ask questions that give those in need the opportunity to talk in a safe environment. It also gives skills to listen with empathy and without judgement – as well as the information to assist those in need in finding the correct help.
This training is not to diagnose, advise or prescribe to those suffering, but to offer a safe, non judgemental environment that is accessible to all.
Hair&BeautyTalk training will be available in person (when Covid restrictions permit) and online. “In this industry we have long standing relationships with people and are there for the highs and lows of those in our chairs,” Tom continues.
“We are there for the first dates, the engagements, the weddings, christenings, new jobs etc, but we are also there for the redundancies, divorces, funerals and break-ups. Whether we like it or not we have these conversations, I want to prepare the industry for these situations, as they can be a matter of life and death.”
Tom aims to gain funding to ensure that this training is always at no cost to an industry that has been hit so hard during the pandemic and helps prepare pros for the influx of clients offloading concerns and worries due to Covid-19.
Tom is also working on a mental health PT session which will expand the key steps to mental wellbeing and help provide knowledge of what we can do to keep ourselves mentally fit.
Watch Tom Chapman chatting to Scratch‘s managing editor, Helena Biggs, about the training below.
For more information about Hair&Beauty Talk training, email tom@lionsbarbercollective.com and follow @thelionsbarbers on Instagram.