Creating Child Safe Swim Schools: Putting the Child Safe Standards into Practice

Child safe practice is more than having the right policies in place. It is about how safeguarding is understood, applied and embedded across the everyday operations of a swim school or aquatic environment.

AUSTSWIM’s new online professional development course, Creating Child Safe Swim Schools: Embedding the Child Safe Standards in Aquatic Environments, has been developed to help aquatic professionals strengthen child safe practices across their organisation.

Bringing the Child Safe Standards into the aquatic environment

Aquatic environments are unique. Teachers and staff work closely with children and young people in settings where physical contact, changing areas, supervision, communication with families and professional boundaries all require careful consideration. With Child Safe Standards now mandatory across most Australian states and territories, understanding how these requirements apply in aquatic environments has never been more important.

This 3-hour online course takes the Child Safe Standards and applies them specifically to these environments, helping aquatic professionals understand what good safeguarding practice can look like in day-to-day operations.

Developed by AUSTSWIM Lead Safeguarding Advisor Phil Doorgachurn, the course explores:

• Leadership and child safe culture
• Engagement with children and families
• Safer recruitment and staff practices
• Professional boundaries
• Complaints and responding to concerns
• Physical and online environments
• Policies and procedures
• Continuous improvement

Learning is then brought to life through realistic aquatic safeguarding scenarios, helping participants move from understanding the standards to considering how they can be applied in practice.

Building safeguarding capability across the aquatic sector

Creating safer environments for children and young people requires safeguarding to be understood across every level of an organisation.

For swim schools and aquatic facilities, that means ensuring leaders, managers, teachers and other team members understand their responsibilities and have the confidence to recognise risks, maintain appropriate professional boundaries and contribute to a strong child safe culture.

Creating Child Safe Swim Schools provides practical, industry-specific professional development to support that capability.

Online and self-paced | 3 PD hours

AUSTSWIM Teacher: $69 | Non-member: $89

Continue your safeguarding learning

Already completed AUSTSWIM’s Safeguarding Children and Young People PD?

Creating Child Safe Swim Schools is the ideal next step, building on your safeguarding knowledge and focusing on how child safe principles and standards can be embedded across aquatic organisations and everyday practice.

New to AUSTSWIM safeguarding PD?

AUSTSWIM’s new Child Safeguarding PD Bundle brings both safeguarding courses together into one learning pathway.

Complete:

Safeguarding Children and Young People | 5 PD hours
Understand safeguarding responsibilities, risks, professional boundaries and how to recognise and respond to concerns.

Creating Child Safe Swim Schools | 3 PD hours
Explore how the Child Safe Standards can be embedded across leadership, people, policies, environments and everyday aquatic operations.

Together, the courses provide 8 hours of professional development designed specifically for the aquatic industry.

AUSTSWIM Teacher: $109 | Non-member: $140

Strengthen your safeguarding knowledge, build practical capability and help create safer aquatic environments for every child and young person.

Learn more and enrol with AUSTSWIM.

https://austswim.com.au/professional-development