The safety and wellbeing of children should sit at the heart of any organisation’s values. However, this does not mean that development and implementation of child safe practices is always as good as it needs to be or that improvements can’t be made. Further to this, ensuring children’s safety in an aquatic industry context can present a range of additional and specialised challenges. This is why Royal Life Saving have developed two online child safety modules; one targeted at frontline workers and the other at management level staff.
The chief purpose of the modules is to assist the aquatic industry, and its workforce, to develop a clear understanding of the expectations, legal requirements and best practices relating to child safety.
Frontline staff:
This is essentially designed for swim teachers, program instructors, pool lifeguards, and any other staff that come into regular contact with children through their role at an aquatic facility, swim school or similar. It focuses on equipping learners with knowledge and skills around appropriate and inappropriate conduct, identifying abuse - including identifying grooming behaviours, and obligations and best practice around responding to and reporting abuse or suspected abuse. It should take around 30 minutes to complete.
Management Staff:
This is essentially designed for those in leadership and management roles within an aquatic industry organisation and for any role that requires leadership and oversight on child safety, e.g. Child Safety Officer. It covers the same content as the Frontline version, but also looks more closely at what can be done at an organisational level, in terms of instilling and promoting a child safe culture, using the 10 Child Safe Standards as a guiding framework, and effectively managing risks to children’s safety at all levels. It should take around 45 minutes to complete.
Of course, we understand that dividing staff into Frontline and Management doesn’t always fit and if you are unsure which version is most appropriate for you or your staff our suggestion is take the Management version. Why? It covers exactly the same content, in the same way, as the Frontline version and then goes into other areas. If the additional content is not so relevant, it can be regarded as information only, and the learner can still focus their learning on the parts that are most relevant to them.
Like many of the professional development products on offer through Royal Life Saving the content is highly contextualised to the aquatic industry environment and uses a range screen designs, interactions, visual representations, scenarios, reflection tools and knowledge checks to maximise engagement and learning.
The modules are ultimately designed to give those that work in the industry confidence and clarity in managing this extremely important and at times challenging part of their roles.
Contact your local Royal Life Saving State and Territory Member Organisations (STMOs) to find out more about these courses and availability in your local area.
Note that Royal Life Saving Society – Australia National Office is NOT a Registered Training Organisation (RTO). All nationally recognised training is delivered by Royal Life Saving STMOs.
