Let’s keep water safety top of mind Emma Lawrence > Managing Director, Kids Alive
ACA Qld Patron Laurie Lawrence, founder of ‘Kids Alive Do the Five’ Drowning Prevention Campaign, is dedicated to the welfare of Australian children and educating the community on children’s water safety. Water Safety advocate and Managing Director of Kids Alive Emma Lawrence outlines the training program available to early childhood educators and encourages teachers to keep the water safety message alive.
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The Royal Lifesaving National Drowning Report 2020 included a promising statistic – that drowning deaths among children aged 0-4 have decreased by 52% compared with the 10-year average. However, we are still tragically losing children to drowning events.
Early childhood educators across Australia have an important role to play in helping teach children about water safety. This year Kids Alive is launching a new updated online training program for educators, which has separate components for children aged 0-3 years and 3-5 years.
In the one-year reporting period during 2019/20, twelve children in Australia aged 0-4 lost their lives to drowning. Swimming pools were the most common location for drowning events but children also drowned in lakes, dams, rivers, creeks, bathtubs and spa baths.
Emma said, “Each module takes 30 minutes to complete and our goal is to have every early childhood educator in Australia complete this training each and every year. We can’t become complacent, as we have seen in the past that drowning statistics in children under 5 jump again
EARLY EDITION > SUMMER 2020
