Safe barriers save lives

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Wednesday, 5 January 2022

Making water safety a priority at home will keep your family safe around the pool. This includes compliant safety barriers, and carrying out simple safety checks.

According to the Royal Life Saving Society of Australia, in 2020/21, 25 Australian children aged 0-4 years drowned, with swimming pools being one of the most common locations. Non-compliant barriers are the biggest cause of accidental drowning deaths of children in home pools.

Ensuring your safety barriers are compliant at all times, will prevent young children from accessing the pool area unsupervised.

Some safety barrier checks includes:

making sure the gate leading to the pool area is self-closing and self-latching
checking that there are no gaps or spaces in the barrier for children to get through
never leaving the gate propped open

Children may use objects such as a tables or chairs to climb over the fence to access the pool. Removing all climbable objects surrounding the safety barriers will prevent this from happening.

When children are playing near water, it is important that an adult is always available to provide constant supervision.

In 2019, the Victorian Government introduced safety standards, requiring all pool and spa owners to register with Council and follow the certification regime. This includes portable pools and spas containing a water depth of more than 30cm. Further information on the safety standards is available on our Swimming pools and spas webpage.

Safe barriers save lives

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