June 2024 - Connecting the Water Safety Community
Lifting our game to help our tamariki love water and stay safe
Designed for educators, a series of Real-World Workshops for Water Skills for Life providers hit the water in Gore, Christchurch, Palmerston North, and Auckland.
Using experience from specialists based at Ballarat’s Swim to Survive the real-world focus is tailored for New Zealand’s waters and aquatic industry. This initiative aims to strengthen and challenge the aquatic industry to better prepare young people for their life around water. Workshops built on the framework of Water Skills for Life to bridge the gap between pool-based learning and essential real-world survival skills.
Where’s the need?
A majority of drownings happen in open water environments
Most aquatic programmes are delivered in controlled pool environments
Survival skills taught in the pool aren’t easy to relate to the real-world conditions that tamariki will experience.
Emphasis on techniques and distances in controlled pool settings – in the absence of teaching critical survival skills needed in real-world environments, means there is a significant gap between the competencies learned in pools and the demands of open water.
Opinion: Are our kids learning to swim? Or are they learning to survive?
“I want our aquatic industry to come together and all be part of the solution to reduce our drowning rates. To achieve this, we need swim schools and aquatic educators to understand where drownings are occurring in our communities and work out how they can integrate these environments and activities into their programmes. Together, it is our responsibility to give our tamariki a better chance of survival when things go wrong.”
– Water Safety New Zealand Interventions Manager Esther Hone
Encouraging health professionals and first responders to accurately record location data could help drive down non-fatal drownings.
General Manager Data Science and Insights Chris Casey describes the absence of location details in hospitalisation data as a “void” for his team’s ability to inform preventative actions. Data currently only records where the patient was admitted to – but not where the incident happened.
“I would love to see us being really smart with location data. What we work with right now is broad, and it differs between regions and services. Knowing exact incident locations would help us to build insights and make correlations with other behaviour choices.”
Also in this newsletter:
Water Skills for Life - Real world views
Funding community initiatives - 2024/25
Profile: Nga Kairuku o Te Whanganui-a-Tara
Kia Maanu Kia Ora - Kai Ika
Kia Maanu Kia Ora - Wellington Wahine Divers
Data to drive down drownings
World Drowning Prevention Day 2024
Keeping water safe in floodwater
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