Do you need qualification to do a course to be a babysitter?

What is involved in the "assessment" of a national lifeguard qualification course?

• I live in England and I signed up to do this national lifeguard qualification course and I was just reading that you need a friend to be your "casualty" during the final assessment. None of my friends will agree to do this for me unless they know what they will have to do, and how long it would be etc. Also, if none of my friends agree to this, what will that mean? Do you think that by any chance I could use someone else on the course or something as the casualty? Many thanks, and 10 points for best answer :)

• Answer:

  I would be interested to know where you read that. Assuming that you're talking about the NPLQ (for pools) or the NBLQ (for beaches), then the 'casualty' for your final assessment will most likely be one of the other candidates doing the assessment. This is because (1) lifeguard course candidates will have been trained to recognise specific types of casualty, and hence to accurately simulate them, which adds realism (which you might not get from some random friend), and (2) doing it this way is usually the most convenient option. The official site for NPLQ information is http://www.iql.org.uk/. Feel free to mail me through Y!A if you have any other questions re. lifeguarding in the UK