Heatwave water deaths - campaign required

It’s also probably worthwhile noting one tragic fatality was at Rotherham park country lake - where the National OW championships are held annually.

Perhaps because in the 1980s teens were much more free range. We'd go off on our bikes for hours, only going home when it got dark or we were hungry.

A lot of today's young people are ferried everywhere by their parents and not allowed to do anything deemed 'dangerous'. So unless they have parents who swim outside, they might not have experienced it themselves. Plus there's so much more to do. A lot of the ways they keep themselves occupied - gaming, social media etc, didn't exist in the 1980s. We had to make our own fun by flying kites near power lines or playing chicken on the railway

I do remember people drowning then. There's still a memorial at a local lake for someone who drowned many years ago. Going back further, one of my distant relatives (great uncle or similar) drowned in the local river as a teenager/young man. One of the reasons why DM, who can't swim herself, made it a priority that we could all swim.

There are campaigns everywhere.

DS is a swimmer and his swim club out out some links to campaigns reminding them that being a good swimmer doesn’t counteract cold water shock.

And his club do open water swimming so the reminder was specific to those swimmers too that it’s done under supervision with qualified coaches.

People take risks all the time. Sadly sometimes that ends in fatality.

All the campaigns in the world won’t change that when all the campaigns we currently have haven’t .

Why have drownings reduced so much since the 80s then?

No, what’s required is common sense.

I don’t think that’s a fair conclusion. Most of the incidents weren’t in cities at all, they happened at places like Ribchester, Pickmere, Kingsbury and Angle, which are villages, as well as lakes and rivers near small towns. And I don’t think it’s been said where the individuals were from.

And suggesting the parents were “ignorant” seems quite harsh when we know nothing about the families involved. Open water can be dangerous for anyone, regardless of where they live or how experienced they are.

This is all down to lack of parenting, not knowing where your kids are and not teaching them that water is dangerous.

We're facing an epidemic of young adults who've never been told how to keep themselves safe and have never been told No.

I hear Andrew Tate is quite popular with teenage boys. Perhaps he could teach them.something useful!

Parents should be giving this message to their children, over and over again as necessary. My parents taught me the dangers of open water. Never swim in reservoirs, be careful paddling in lochs cause they often drop off suddenly, etc.

Or maybe we need something shown in schools, but I guarantee some whinging parents would be unhappy about something scaring their child. But realistically, you need the harsh truth to break through the teenage bravado. I do training around water work as a necessity for my job and the guy who did our training for us was a rescue swimmer. He told us, without sugarcoating it, that he shouldn't really be called a 'rescue' swimmer...unless he's there when you get into difficulties, he's 'recovering' your body. That's the sort of message that we need to get through to children. There is very little chance of surviving if you get into difficulty. And never to go into water to try to help someone else, or to help a pet.

The NC requires us to teach children to swim 25m unaided and without stopping. But we only have a very limited amount of time in the curriculum to do this. It's covered in PE in year 3 but it's not the only thing we have to teach in PE in year 3.

As with every area of learning in school, some children will meet the expectation in the timeframe allowed, some will exceed it and some won't meet it. The children who meet and exceed it are usually the childen whose parents take them swimming outside of school. It's unusual for a child who has never been taken swimming by parents to achieve the 25m. Some childen come into year 3 never having been in a swimming pool before.

It's also a skill, like many taught in schools, that is forgotten without regular practice and schools can't do that either. Some children go swimming with us and never go again.

I read so many threads about what schools should teach and so many excuses made for parents who don't do it. Some of them might be valid reasons, but schools can't fix everything.

There are warnings and campaigns aplenty. Parents of those lost in water incidents have gone into schools, lectured kids of the dangers, handed out leaflets.
But teenagers have an unfortunate tendency to be right and everyone else is wrong. They just wont listen.
One lady on the news last night was talking about her son, who she lost 15 years ago, and 15 years on, still nobody is listening.
Tragic but inevitable, unfortunately

This is the info that needs to be common knowledge.

(And some teens would still jump in - as others have said, this is not a new phenomenon by any stretch of the imagination)

Someone nearly drowned in a waterfall in my area.
There have been previous deaths there.
There are multiple signs that warn about this.
People still go in the water.

What more warnings should we give?

I'd personally go the way the French do it for road deaths with life size silhouettes marking where people died. Do this for water fatalities as well as RTCs. The Swiss also place memorial crosses or concrete plaques onto rocks at points where people fell to their deaths in the Alps, it certainly focuses the mind when you've got a big step across a gap or exposed section to contend with!!

83pc of drownings are male.

About 95pc of drownings between the ages of 10 and 25 are male.

If you have sons, you should sit then down and have some serious conversations about water safety. Parents need to do this, not just expect an advert in Fortnite or on tiktok to do it for them

They might be able to swim in a pool but open water is much colder below the surface. You tire more quickly in the cold.

I am a regular open water swimmer. In the last few years, I've pulled a few young teen boys out of water where they have been struggling. Not immediate risk of drowning but clearly not coping and somehow too embarrassed to say "I need to get out".
Their brains are unable to risk assess accurately and their pride/fear of looking weak adds to that problem

You can’t make such firm statements on your recollection of what happened in the 80s. It’s very clear, supported by data, that waterways are safer and there are less drownings now. You can just ask an AI and it takes a second:

“Many more in the 80s. The improvement is quite significant:

UK drowning fatalities across the five-year period 1985–1989 roughly halved compared to 2015–2019, with the rate dropping from 4.79 to 2.04 deaths per 100,000 people. By 2022, the rate had fallen to fewer than 1 in every 100,000. 

In 24 out of 37 years between 1983 and 2020, the UK saw a year-on-year decrease in the drowning rate.  Today, around 250 people die from drowning per year on average — roughly one every 1.5 days. 

The likely reasons for the long-term decline include better water safety education, improved lifeguard provision, fencing and signage around dangerous water, and better emergency response.

One recent caveat: there has been a slight uptick in drowning deaths in recent years, possibly linked to the boom in wild and outdoor swimming.  But even so, the numbers remain far below what they were in the 1980s.”

Drownings have halved since the 1980s.

see eg this post here looking at analysing the data.

https://www.outdoorswimmingsociety.com/drowning-statistics/

Unfortunately the cost of swimming lessons is often prohibited and although schools are funded for primary children to be taught to swim it is woefully underfunded and inadequate. A term’s swimming lessons once a week are not going to make confident swimmers.

This this this.

And ohhhh I am so sad for all the families who have lost their children over the weekend. It’s awful.

Most lakes and rivers in the UK are inherently dangerous. Sewage, blue-green algae and rubbish under the surface eg shopping trolleys dumped. Don't forget reservoirs. Most young people don't risk assess cold, depth and currents despite annual campaigns from RLSS, RNLI and Fire Chiefs. Maybe needs a big name footballer or singer?

I dare say that in some schools it’s a cultural thing. The parents can’t swim, the mothers would never want to be seen in a swimming costume and are nervous of the water anyway, so kids are never taken to a public pool.

Yes, I know there are also native British families where the parents never learned to swim, so are unlikely to take their dcs as a family activity. Plus there’s the expense factor, and non-school swimming lessons aren’t cheap.

My Gdcs’ primary provides swimming lessons in year 3, but IIRC they continue after Y3 only for those who still can’t swim to a certain standard.

Oh but it is.

when I was growing up I don’t recall seeing multiple stories of teenagers drowning in lakes during heatwaves. As kids we would use our common sense and have water fights on the green or go to our friends with the big paddling pool. I was lucky enough to live nearby several houses with their own pools and spent summers with friends having a blast whilst our parents would be at work. Nobody drowned or got injured then.

it’s not just the drowning incidents, it’s the whole attitude of them in today’s age as a hole.

I refuse to go into town during the holidays or after school finishes because it’s just full of teens wearing balaclavas ( even in this hot weather) tormenting shoppers and shop keepers for no reason at all. I was driving through town a few weeks ago and was greeted by 20-25 masked youths, all with alcohol riding bikes all in the road coming towards oncoming traffic. They just do not give a shift at all. I later saw on social media they were running through the town throwing bricks at shop windows and attempting to purchase alcohol from pubs.

Did this happen in your childhood?!

It’s the same with level
crossing’s on the railway
dont cross when the lights are flashing or the barriers are coming down, so many have to chance it so that their not inconvenienced for 2 mins. And red lights for that matter

At my school we already cover this in PSHE lessons, I expect most schools do, but there is a big difference between listening in a lesson and taking that learning out into the real world when faced with peer pressure to do something, especially as a teenage boy.

That sounds very stressful.

My school is near a river with a bridge that kids jump off.

Every year we have the fire brigade come into school to do assemblies on water safety. It's a hard-hitting assembly where they talk about the dead children they have pulled out of the river and how it has affected their families.

Kids still jump off the bridge.

I've been worried about them all half term as before we broke up they were talking about going down to the river and I warned them to stay safe but knew they'd pay no attention.