Water Safety at Home: Essential Tips to Protect Your Children

The home pool environment often brings fun and enjoyment. However, it also carries a high risk of drowning, particularly for children aged 0 to 4 years. To ensure your family’s safety, it’s crucial to understand the risks and implement effective prevention strategies. Here are key actions and tips to keep your children safe around water at home.

 Understanding the Risks

• Accidental Falls: Most children who drown in home pools fall in by accident. Drowning happens quickly and silently, often without any noise or splashing.

• Curiosity and Danger: Young children are naturally curious and attracted to water but do not understand the concept of danger.

• Distracted Supervision: In many cases of child drowning, designated supervisors were distracted by everyday tasks such as conversations, answering the door, or attending to another child.

Common Causes of Pool Accidents

• Faulty Barriers: Children often gain access to the pool area through a fence or gate that is in disrepair or one that has been deliberately propped open.

• Attractive Nuisances: Pool toys left in or around the pool can attract children, leading them to attempt to get through or over a fence.

Key Strategies for Prevention

1. Supervise

• Active Supervision: An adult must supervise children when in, on, or around water. Active supervision means focusing all your attention on your child, being within arm’s reach, interacting with your child, and being ready to enter the water in an emergency.

• Avoid Distractions: Any distractions, such as using mobile phones or doing household chores, increase the risk of drowning.

2. Restrict Access

• Proper Fencing: Restrict access to water by correctly installing and regularly maintaining a pool fence with a self-closing and self-latching gate. Never prop the gate open.

• Home Pool Safety Checklist: Use Royal Life Saving’s home pool safety checklist to ensure all safety measures are in place.

• Fencing Requirements: All water bodies with a depth of 30cm or more need to be fenced by State or Territory legislation. This includes portable pools such as inflatable and wading pools.

• Secure Toys: Store all pool toys out of sight and reach of children and never leave toys in the pool area when not in use.

3. Teach Water Safety Skills

• Water Awareness Classes: Enroll children in water awareness classes to familiarize them with water and teach basic water safety rules.

• Spend Time Together in Water: Spend time with your children in the water to help them become comfortable and confident.

• Set Safety Rules: Establish basic water safety rules for your children.

4. Respond to Emergencies

• CPR Training: All parents are encouraged to learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Knowing how to respond to an emergency could mean the difference between life and death.

Downloadable Tips 

For quick reference, here are some downloadable tips you can share with your family to help keep everyone informed and safe around water: