Water Safety for Parents/Guardians

Parents and guardians have two key responsibilities regarding water safety:

To take appropriate steps to safeguard themselves and their family, especially young children
To prepare family to be self-reliant in and around the water through swim lessons and water safety education

In addition to this page, check out Worldwide Water Safety and Water Safety Basics for more information about drowning prevention and water safety.

Messages for Parents/Guardians

The age group with the highest drowning rate are children under 5 years of age. This group is also the most dependent on parental awareness, preparation, and intervention. For this reason, parents, guardians, and other who care for small children must learn all they can.

Learning from Yoni and the Gottesmans

To see what can happen when supervisors are not concerned about drowning prevention, watch the horrific Yoni Gottesman drowning video news report that shows 4-year-old Yoni, “a happy, athletic kid,” abandoned by his counselor in the water and drowning right in front of a lifeguard who does not see him for several minutes. The family was awarded $16.2 million when they sued the Cathedral Oaks Athletic Club, but no amount of money can replace their child!

Yoni also has a website that his loving parents have published with the hope that their tragic story will keep other children from losing their lives as Yoni did. The Yoni Gottesman Foundation is a non-profit organization that actively promotes awareness of child safety by better training and legislation. To learn more, go to www.yonigottesman.com/contact.htm.

At 4 years old, Yoni was too young to be left in the pool unattended. The camp counselor and the lifeguard should have known that (it is a pretty standard practice). The camp counselor also apparently tired Yoni out by dunking him and playing roughly with him for several minutes. Then, he leaves him alone! The lifeguard on duty is only a few yards from Yoni but doesn’t see him for over 8 minutes! A lifeguard who knows how to identify drowning victims and who is continually scanning the pool would not have allowed this mistake to happen.

As parents, you cannot always be with your children. At 4 or 5, we begin entrusting our children to other caregivers: babysitters, daycare providers, teachers, and even camp counselors. But we can come and take a look at the situation. A critical look at how a lifeguard or a counselor works can either give you a sense of relief, or it can raise a BIG red flag.

As your children get older, talk to them about places they go and supervisors they have. Teach them what safety is in each environment and ask what the supervisors and caregivers do. How they act. If you have any concerns at all, be vocal and persistent until satisfied or remove your child from the program. And when you are with your children, always designate a Water Watcher to keep watch on your loved ones, no matter what their age or ability. The life you save may be someone you love and can never replace. Like Yoni!

Supervising the Supervisor

The next time you are with your family at the beach or community pool or waterpark, check out the quality of the supervision. That’s right; supervise the supervisor. Audit that lifeguard. Here’s what to look for:

The lifeguard is certified. First thing, go right into the front office and ask to see proof that lifeguards are currently certified in Lifeguarding, First Aid, and CPR. If the front office or person in charge cannot show you this proof, report the facility to the county or municipal health department.
The lifeguard is attentive. He or she is actively watching the swimmers, as evidenced by head movement, alert posture, and active enforcement of rules.
The lifeguard is experienced and professional. Talk to the lifeguard (when he or she is not on duty). Ask questions about the lifeguard’s background, training, and experience. For example, ask the lifeguard about his or her background (e.g., How many years as a lifeguard? What certifications he or she has? What specialized training he or she has received?). Ask how new lifeguards are prepared for surveillance duty after being hired there? Ask how often the lifeguards gets together for in-service (on-the-job) training? Answers may vary, but you should come away with a better understanding of the lifeguard’s preparation (or lack thereof) for the job.
The lifeguard is well equipped. Lifeguards these days have flotation and personal protective equipment. Pool and waterpark lifeguards have rescue tubes (long, foam-filled flotation aids complete with shoulder strap and towline). Beach lifeguards use the rescue buoy (a hard plastic, torpedo-shaped flotation aid with molded handles and shoulder strap and towline), rescue board, or rescue craft. Any lifeguard without equipment may not be properly trained, or he or she may be working for an agency attempting to cut corners due to a tight budget or other factors.
The lifeguard remains hydrated. Dehydration affects concentration and attentiveness. Make sure the lifeguards you check out have water and reasonable protection from the sun.
The lifeguard is not distracted. The lifeguard on duty should not be eating, listening to music, reading the paper, doing homework, cleaning up around the facility, talking on the cellphone or texting, talking excessively to guests or coworkers, etc. An on-duty lifeguard should remain focused on the primary responsibility of watching the guests in the water.
The lifeguard has no intrusions. An intrusion is like a distraction, only worse. It is a distraction assigned by the lifeguard’s supervisor. For example, the supervisor may want the lifeguard to watch the pool and make the admission fee or sell junk food at the counter or hose the pool deck. Anytime the lifeguard has two jobs to do at the same time, his or her attention is divided. This is a big problem if one of the duties is guest surveillance.
Lifeguard service is zoned if necessary. In larger facilities, such as beaches, larger pools, waterfronts, and waterparks, the area is divided into overlapping zones with a lifeguard assigned to each zone. Zone coverage ensures the all parts of the swimming area is being supervised.
The lifeguard rotates and takes an hourly break. If two or more lifeguards are on duty, make sure they rotate periodically (like every 15 to 20 minutes) and have a rest break once per hour. Rotating from station to station adds variety to the lifeguard’s job as well as an opportunity to get down, stretch and walk a little, and even take a quick dip in the water. A minimum 15-minute break per hour is recommended.

If too many of these factors are missing, the quality of the supervision may be suspect; take your family elsewhere.

Other Important Water Safety Messages

To learn about how else you can be prepared, check out these links:

Mensajes para los padres sobre la seguridad con respecto del agua para evitar ahogamientos:

Even if lifeguard service is provided or coaches, instructors, teachers, or camp counselors are supposed to be watching, you have the responsibility to make sure they really are!

Layers of Protection

Layers of protection refers to a strategy of placing multiple protective “barriers” between people (especially children) and danger, such as drowning. “Multiple barriers work better than single barriers for obvious reasons: if one barrier fails, others are there to prevent access to danger. There is no single point of weakness through which a “trajectory of accident opportunity” can pass.

This model is based on the Swiss Cheese Model, propounded in 1990 by James T. Reason and Dante Orlandella of the University of Manchester and used in the fields of aviation, computer security, defense, engineering, and healthcare. In the Swiss Cheese model, an organization’s defenses against failure are modeled as a series of barriers, represented as slices of cheese. The holes in each slice represents lapses or weaknesses in individual parts of the safety system and are continually varying in size and position across the slices. The safety system can produce an accident when a hole in each slice momentarily aligns, permitting, in the case of drowning prevention, access to water so that a child or other person can drown or suffer water-related injury.

To prevent drowning, remember the ABCs of layers of protection:

A stands for Adult Supervision
B stands for Barriers-4-sided barriers that prevent access to the pool
C stands for Classes-First Aid and CPR classes for parents and swimming classes for the kids (and adults!)

Other important layers of protection include alarm systems, pool covers, locking toilets, self-latching gates, emptying containers of water around the house, designating a water watcher at home or on the road when the family is swimming. The more layers you can set up, the less likely that lapses in protection will line up, providing access to danger.

As illustrated above, the water safety system for the toddler in this example consists of four layers of safety or protection. Four-layers is a robust system especially since each layer is capable of providing “stand-alone” protection. In the illustration, unfortunately, there are multiple lapses which line up to provide an opportunity for a potential drowning. If any of these lapses do not occur (e.g., the gate is locked, not left open), tragedy would be averted.