Overview

Supervision is the single most important thing you can do to keep your children safe around water.

Active supervision means focusing all of your attention on your children all of the time, when they are in, on or around the water. Parents need to be within arms’ reach, interacting with children and ready to enter the water in case of an emergency. When you’re in or around water with your child, supervision should be ‘eyes on’ and ‘hands on’ at all times.

Parents are busy and often try to do many things at once to save time. However, multi-tasking can lead parents to become distracted. Children can wander away unnoticed while parents attend to other tasks such as answering the front door, reading an email or attending to dinner in the oven.

Older children should never be left to supervise younger siblings around water.

Distractions

Any distraction is dangerous and puts young children at risk around water. Whether it is a phone or social media use, or carrying out everyday tasks, such as leaving a child unsupervised momentarily to cook, take the rubbish out or collect the washing, no task is worth your child’s life

Downloadable Resources