Bathmat campaign

Humble bathmat campaign a winner

Findings of a ten-year study into a Water Safety New Zealand social marketing campaign to parents and caregivers via a humble child’s bathmat has found that it has been instrumental in the positive change to water safety attitude, researchers say.

The campaign, which involves Plunket Nurses distributing a bathmat with a water safety message printed on it, received praise from parents and caregivers who took part in a survey that measured its success.

The bathmats were printed in English and Te Reo and reminded parents and caregivers to ‘Always supervise children near water – always!’ and were distributed at a child’s five month Well Child visit. Key water safety messages are also discussed at a child’s nine month visit and parents were also exposed to a water safety promotional material via a poster when they visit their Plunket Rooms. A sticker was also put into their child's book reminding them of key messages.

Bathmat were also delivered to whānau through iwi and Well Child Tamariki Ora providers. Apprpoximately 30,000 bathmats were delivered annually to whānau across the country during the campaign.

Back in 2019, a sample of recipients said the bathmat campaign was instrumental in reminding them of the key water safety message.

Researchers also found that recipients were able to recall the message on the bathmat and other water safety messages that were communicated to them at the various Plunket visits.

At five months a baby begins to sit up and it was decided to introduce the bathmats then as a way of preventing slippages in the bath.

Research into drowning statistics shows that adult supervision is critical to a child’s safety and that a moments inattention can result in a drowning in relatively small amounts of water.

During the ten years that the bathmat campaign ran there were 54 drowning deaths recorded of children aged birth to five years. Most children died in home pools followed by ponds and baths.

Eighty six percent of all under five drownings were children aged two or younger and nearly half of those drownings were children aged 12 to 23 months – just at a time when they are up and mobile.

Active supervision is vital to prevent drownings and in all cases above could have been prevented with parents and caregivers closely watching their children.

Always use a bathmat when bathing baby and be water safe.