Rainbow Room International is partnering with Action for Children, a charity that protects and supports children and young people, providing practical and emotional care and support, ensuring their voices are heard and bringing lasting improvements to their lives.
This partnership will see Action for Children delivering Mental Health training to Rainbow Room International Director’s, management and salon teams. The collaboration will also see Rainbow Room International provide a group of youngsters from the Action for Children charity with hairdressing training to help them achieve a level 1 qualification in hairdressing over an 8-10 week period.
The Rainbow Room International team have already started their training programme with the charity to identify signs of mental health distress and providing advice and starting a supportive conversation. They have also taken part in online training developed by NHS Health Scotland and NHS Education for Scotland to support suicide prevention and raise awareness of the issues that affect people. The team will also take part in further training ranging from Suicide Prevention to Self-Harm Awareness, with the aim that every Rainbow Room International stylist will have mental health qualifications and apprentices will have wellbeing and mindfulness courses throughout their apprenticeships.
In June, Rainbow Room International will welcome a small group of youngsters from the Action for Children charity to start their hairdressing level 1 qualification. Youngsters will firstly be welcome to the Rainbow Room International Academy to meet the team and for talks about the opportunity and training programme, with the Rainbow Room International team sharing personal experiences to build connection and engagement.
Our priority plan this year, particularly after the effects of the pandemic, is to focus on the mental wellbeing of all of our teams,” said Leigh Kerr, Rainbow Room International Academy Director. “The training provided by Action for Children has been invaluable to us, allowing us to be a lot more knowledgeable on mental health and how we can help and support ourselves, our teams and our clients. As hairdressers, communication is a key part of our role with our teams and clients and this training has helped us to understand how we can communicate more effectively, particularly in regards to sensitive subjects. We now have 12 fully qualified Mental Health First Aiders and all of our Rainbow Room International teachers and management were involved in the Mental Health Awareness courses.”