What is water safety for kids?

Water safety means supervision – always staying with your child and watching closely whenever they’re near water. This is essential even when your child can swim.

What supervision looks like

• Being able to see your child and keeping your child within arm’s reach at all times
• Being able to respond quickly, whether you’re at the beach or the swimming pool, near dams, rivers and lakes, or at home near the bath or spa
• Holding your child’s hand when you’re near waves or paddling in rivers

What supervision doesn’t look like

• Occasionally glancing while you nap, use an electronic device, read or do household chores
• Watching your children playing outside while you’re inside
• Leaving an older child to supervise, rather than doing it yourself

Other water safety essentials

• Teaching your child how to swim and be safe around water from a young age – many children can learn to swim by the time they’re 4-5 years old
• Learning how to do CPR as a family – this could save your child’s life in an emergency

Why water safety is important: drowning prevention

Water safety is an essential part of drowning prevention.

Drowning is one of the major causes of death for children under 5 years.

For every child who dies from drowning in Australia, approximately 7 other children are hospitalised from near-drowning incidents. Some of these incidents result in severe brain damage.

Why drowning is a major risk for young children

Babies and toddlers are top heavy, which puts them at higher risk of drowning. If they fall into shallow water, they can’t always lift themselves out.

How and where drowning happens

Drowning can occur quickly and quietly, without any warning noises.

In Australia, children under 5 drown in:

• swimming pools
• baths and spa baths
• rivers, creeks and streams
• the sea
• dams, lagoons and lakes.

Children also drown in less obvious locations, like nappy buckets, water tanks, water features and fish ponds – even pets’ water bowls.

If you find a child in or near a body of water and the child isn't breathing or responding, take emergency action. Call 000 and start CPR. Check out our illustrated guide to CPR for babies under 12 months and our illustrated guide to CPR for children and teenagers. You could print them out and display them for easy reference.

Water safety around your home

The majority of drowning deaths in Australia result from a child falling or wandering into water, particularly into a backyard pool. But a young child can drown in just a few centimetres of water.

Tips to prevent drowning and improve water safety at home

• Remove containers with water from around the house. Make sure your child can’t get to any bodies of water, including the bath, on their own.
• Use a nappy bucket with a tight-fitting lid and keep the bucket closed, off the floor and out of your child’s reach.
• Supervise children in the bath until they’re at least 5 years old, even if older siblings are in the bath with them. Older siblings don’t have the skills to react to emergencies like drowning.
• Empty the baby bath as soon as you’re finished with it so older siblings can’t climb in.
• Empty sinks, tubs, buckets, baths, basins, troughs and paddling pools immediately after use.
• Secure covers to ponds and birdbaths and cover other water features with wire mesh, or keep them empty until your child is at least 5 years old.
• Stay on the inside of the pool safety fence when supervising children in a pool area.
• Keep aquariums and fishbowls out of reach of small children.

By law, in most states and territories, all private swimming pools or spas that are 30 cm deep or deeper must have a swimming pool safety fence. This includes inflatable pools that can hold more than 30 cm of water. All swimming pool safety fences must meet Australian Standard 1926 (AS 1926) safety requirements. Remove any objects near the pool fence or in your yard that your child could climb to get over the pool fence.

Water safety around dams, creeks, ponds and tanks

Children don’t always understand, apply or remember rules, especially when they’re distracted by play. So a securely fenced, safe play area can be an effective barrier between children and water hazards.

Tips to improve water safety around your property

• Fence off the area between the house and any bodies of water.
• Teach your child to not go near the dam, creek or water tank without you.
• Secure a child-proof lid over any water tanks.
• Fence off, drain or seal ponds if your children or visiting children are less than 5 years old.
• Make sure there are no trellises, ladders, windows or trees that your child could climb to get over fences or into water tanks.

Water safety around beaches, the sea, lakes and rivers

Here are tips to improve water safety on the beach and near the sea, lakes and rivers:

• Always stay with your child when they’re playing in or near the sea, lakes or rivers. Hold your child’s hand near waves and when paddling in rivers.
• Take your child only to patrolled beaches where surf lifesavers are present, and swim only between the red and yellow flags. And supervise your child at all times, even when surf lifesavers are present.
• Teach your school-age child what to do if they need help – stay calm, float and raise an arm to signal to a lifeguard or lifesaver.

When your child goes swimming, make sure they don’t stay in cold water for too long. Staying in cold water for too long increases your child’s risk of hypothermia and drowning. Children lose body heat faster than adults because they’re smaller and have less body fat.