The Australian summer season is already reminding many families about the importance of water safety! On Wednesday 4th January, Royal Life Saving Australia released their National Summer Drowning Toll. This report covers all of the statistics collected from the first part of 2022/23 Summer. During the week following Christmas, drowning claimed a total of 17 lives.

Currently there have been 47 drowning deaths reported across Australia. The report breaks these numbers down into greater detail (with percentages of location, age groups, sex and activity. The following are what have been the high risk swimmers from this years report:

• Males (74% were male).
• 35-64 year old (with a total of 38% being in this age group). Followed closely by the 18-34 age group (they account for 26%), and the 0-17 year olds at 19%.
• Coastal waterways (51% of drowning deaths have occurred in these waterways. This is followed closely by inland waterways with 38%. Bringing the total of open waterways to 89%.
• Recreational swimming accounts for 34% of drowning deaths and boating is responsible for 21%.

Royal Life Saving Chief Executive Officer, Justin Scarr is encouraging that all people are “Choosing a safe location to swim, where lifeguards are on duty is essential. Rivers, lakes, and unpatrolled beaches can be incredibly dangerous, especially for people who have fallen out of practice swimming, or never learned to swim.” The urgency to act and improve water safety to our local communities has never been stronger! These are a few tips we would like to encourage you to implement:

• Always supervise children around water (follow our Supervision Policy).
• When swimming in open water, swim between the flags (the yellow & red flags).
• Wear a lifejacket when boating & fishing.
• Do not swim alone. Instead swim where there are trained professionals to help you should any danger arise.
• Learn to swim - attend lessons. Our lessons educate students on water familiarisation, basic water safety skills and will also help to build your confidence in an aquatic environment.

To learn more about Royal Life Saving Australia’s National Summer Drowning Toll here.

Our Supervision Policy:

To help remind our families of our policies we have placed supervision signs up around all of our facilities. You may have spotted some supervision signage similar to the following:

What are our SUPERVISION policies?

The staff of BayFit Leisure Centre will be enforcing the following rules:

• Any child aged 0 to 5 years old MUST remain within arms reach to their parent/guardian. To represent this your child will receive a yellow wristband. This wristband MUST remain on them for the entire duration of your visit.
• Children aged 6 to 10 years old MUST have a parent or guardian who stays close, is alert and maintains visual contact at ALL times.
• 11 to 12 year olds must have a parent or guardian who maintains visual contact at ALL times.
• Anyone over the age of 13 years old may enter the aquatic facility unsupervised.
• The adult to child ratio for this facility is 1:2 (one adult to two children).

You can find full details on our website.

It is important that our families understand that the supervision policy has been implemented for the safety of everyone, and that we ALL have a role to play.

TOGETHER we can help keep the local community safe!

We thank you for your understanding & look forward to a summer filled with FUN!

https://bayfit.com.au/supervision