Firefighters come to the rescue to support York College Beauty Therapy Students

Firefighters @FireHarrogate and ‘Stu’ Support Beauty Therapy On-line Learning @york_college

Firefighters from Harrogate came to the rescue when they loaned an old resuscitation dummy, that was no longer fit for purpose, to Beauty Therapy tutors at York College – to support their students’ on-line learning. 

Karen Goodman, Head of Hair, Beauty and Media Make up at York College explains:

“During lockdown, with no students in College to act as models, we needed to think creatively about demonstrating beauty therapy treatments in a Covid-friendly manner.  After putting out a plea on social media for a mannequin that tutors could work on whilst live-streaming their lessons, we were delighted when Harrogate Fire Station responded with the offer of a resuscitation dummy, to support our students with their learning.” 

Firstly, Beauty Therapy tutors fully sanitised the dummy before using it as a model.  The tutors named the dummy ‘Stu’ (after the firefighter pictured) and he has since been used to demonstrate the padding layout for a faradic electrical muscle toning treatment.  They are looking forward to using Stu to teach lessons on further body electrical treatments and massage techniques over the coming weeks. 

Beauty Therapy student Phoebe Howlett says:

“Studying from home is made much easier when tutors can show you how treatments are carried out, and the pandemic has made this very challenging. If we were in College we would use each other to model treatments and procedures, but now we are working remotely this is not possible.  I think the firefighters from Harrogate showed great initiative in loaning us a resuscitation dummy – it’s ideal for our training purposes.  My tutors have done a brilliant job coping with the demands of teaching during lockdown, they do everything possible to help us in our everyday studies.” 

District Fire Station Manager, Andy Creasey is pleased the fire station could assist: 

“We appreciate the difficulties the pandemic is causing and realised we had the perfect solution to the College’s problem.  We had a well-used resuscitation dummy that was at the end of its serviceable life, or in Stu’s case ‘retired’! It’s nice to see Stu is making learning fun, and that the Beauty Therapy students feel he is an effective addition to their studies.”