Toddler drowns at health club pool - apportioning blame ?

[thetideishigh]

This article really resonated with me on a couple of levels

metro.co.uk/2020/02/11/dad-boy-3-drowned-david-lloyd-pool-says-death-prevented-12218854/.

When my kids were little I insisted that any swimming trips involved 2 adults as I'm not a strong swimmer myself and my dh was lax in his alertness to danger when in sole charge of just two kids ("daddy daycare" was responsible for ALL of our trips to A & E for the kids up to the age of 7).

One of my dc qualified and worked (only part time) as a lifeguard from the age of 16 + 1/2. They were a very serious/responsible child, with the maturity of someone much older according to their teachers and other independent adult observations.

Their younger sibling now also wants to train as a lifeguard so that they can earn a little extra money. They are fairly mature for their age so I was inclined to say yes to funding the training until I read the linked article.

It's set me wondering whether 16/17 year olds are too young for lifeguarding (although my dc is currently more responsible in their attitude to life stuff than a great many 18-21 year olds I know.

I also wonder how the dad came to lose sight of the 3 year old for long enough for him to wander off and fall in to the main pool. I never relaxed at the pool with the kids until they were better swimmers than me. I was a constant personal lifeguard to them on such trips but mostly because of my fears, not because of their behaviour.

What do people think ?

My sister was a full time pool lifeguard at 17, she was good at her job & very keen & competent. She went onto beach life guarding & helped save lives which she won an award for.
Some of the older male lifeguards were too busy eyeing up & flirting with the women!!

It was a totally tragic but entirely preventable. Our local pool has a 1 adult with 1 child under 4 yo ratio for this very reason. You can have 2 children aged 4-8 with 1 adult but under 4 gets their own adult - and that's with 3-5 lifeguards. I'd blame the pool policy, the pool layout, and the parent before I'd come for the lifeguard.

Small pools do sometimes have only one lifeguard and allow a ratio of 2 children to one adult. You do have to watch them like a hawk as drowning can happen so quickly.

I once saw a lifeguard having to go over to two small kids, one of which was about to get into the pool in a regular, non swimming nappy where their parents were, as there were no supervising adults anywhere in sight.

UK lifeguards are wayyy more lax than when we lived in the US. Yes the father should have had hold of the three year old but equally there should have been enough alert guards to see a 3 year old fall in. The DL bears some responsibility for cancelling the class poolside. That was always going to cause confusion.

@thetideishigh thanks, I missed that.

But what sane person takes 2 small kids to a crowded public pool?

Jaxhog I have always taken my 2 dc from the youngest being 4 mo and the oldest 2.5 at the time. Oldest wore a life jacket. Kept hold of the smaller one. Both were very confident swimmers by the time the youngest was 2.5. Never took my eyes off them though and they were trained to sit on their bums on the side until I was ready to hold both their hands and walk to the changing room. Taking the kids swimming wasn't the problem, getting distracted was. I think he probably learned his lesson.

This is a very sad story.
I cannot swim, so took my DC to the toddler pool at the swimming baths from a very young age. (it was completely separate from the main pool, by doors, so no young child could accidentally go into the main pool).
Being a non-swimmer, I was totally paranoid about them being safe, with arm bands, floats, etc, and paid for swimming lessons at the baths as soon as they were old enough (5 years), which was long before they went with the school.
Difficulties can arise if the adult had more than one child (as in this case), but that is when extra care needs to be taken.

At our health club pool the lifeguards monitor who hasn't showered before getting in the pool and ask them to do so, perhaps they could monitor toddlers not wearing arm bands/buoyancy aid when coming through the changing room access doorway.

I have also witnessed stroppy adults arguing with staff on the desk of our nearest outdoor pool over the one adult (age 16 and over) per child under 2 rule.

Between the ages of 2 & 8 it's two children per adult but the rules say that they must be closely supervised. This is possibly the root cause of the really sad case in the Metro article.

8-11's must pass a swim test before they can swim unsupervised.

Still undecided about letting dc2 do the lifeguarding course this summer....

Would you not let her do the course as a skill even if she doesn’t use it? Pretty nifty to have that knowledge as a parent for example- sad case in point.

17 year old boys have fast reflexes that's why they make good lifeguards

We had a child get into difficulties in our local pool in the middle of a very busy pool lord knows how they spotted him struggling to get to the side they literally told everyone to get out the pool jumped in and supported him to swim to the side fortunately he was ok

BTW, although I was questioning the life jacket not being on the child, I still think there's really nobody to blame much here. Sometimes these things just happen – a true accident of circumstances. Hopefully the inquest finds nobody guilty.

This is so sad, but the lifeguard isn’t to blame. Ultimately, parents are responsible for their children at or near a pool.

I wonder how busy the pool was. I am often surprised at how many people are let in at one time to our local pools. Especially on the days when they have fun/inflatable sessions for kids- there are so many kids in there I don’t know how any lifeguard could be expected to notice a child getting into difficulty. I know this is what they’re trained for, but even so, when the pool is heaving with kids, it must be so hard.

'Lifeguard culture' for want of a better phrase really varies between pools.

At one of our local ones, the lifeguards are constantly whistling for jumping on top of other people, children who don't have an obvious adult supervising them, they're shit hot on making sure every unaccompanied child of whatever age can swim a length and giving them an arm band etc.

At the other one, the lifeguards seem to spend most of their time flirting with each other.

I think this is a terrible accident.

Many dl clubs have a ratio of 3 to 1 and plenty of 3 year old can actually swim. I therefore cannot think that a rule about children that age wearing floatation devices is practical.

This is a tragic story for the family.... but the responsibility is with the parent....He needs to accept responsibility for his own mistakes here and stop trying to blame health and safety at the pool.
He should have put the child's life vest on straight away and I am sure he knows this.
There is no way that blame can be apportioned to the lifeguard.
Lifeguards are not childcare providers.

Lifeguards are meant to ya know guard the pool and make sure no one is in distress in the pool. They very clearly failed. I don't think anyone is asking them to be childcare.

Life guards are there to watch and monitor safety in the pool so it sounds like the staffing levels were not adequate to manage this.

Of course the parent is responsible for the child too but distress in the water should have been noted by the life guard.

I imagine the venue will be to blame in some way and will have to review their practice.

I hope no one person is held accountable.

I've complained before about pools where I felt there were blindspots or I thought the lifeguards weren't paying much attention. It never even crossed my mind to think it would then be the health club's responsibility if my child got into trouble. I still watch DD very closely in the pool and she's 10 and can swim about 50 lengths! A tragic accident and we have all had those moments where concentrations lapses briefly but yes the responsibility here is squarely on the father.

As a side note, I trained as a life guard but never actually worked as one because I was too scared 10 seconds of zoning out could lead to me missing something like this.

Some of these comments have set me thinking... I took toddler DS swimming a couple of weeks ago. The 'baby' pool is about 10m x 10m square. It was very very busy with perhaps 30 people of all ages in it. There was one lifeguard. With the best will in the world, I can not think how she could possibly have kept an eye on everyone all at once. Sounds like an impossible job.

I was a lifeguard at that age. Parents so often thought that if there was a lifeguard on duty the parents could leave all childcare to the lifeguards. I honestly saw it so often.
I don't know the circumstances here, it seems unbelievable that a child can enter a busy pool alone and no-one noticed. Not the lifeguard or the parent or another swimmer. A tragic, tragic accident. I am so sad for everyone involved.

Shock horror. Man deflects blame for his own mistake! Typical.

He should have put the swim vest on the child immediately, he shouldn't have let the child out of his sight (or let go of its hand) before he had done it. If the two children were too young or unruly for him to manage by himself, he should have gone with another adult or left one of the children at home.

Of course we all make parenting mistakes and most of them don't have such grave consequences. I would never be able to live with myself if this happened to my child under my watch. If he can forgive himself, good for him, but how dare he blame the lifeguard.

That said, David Lloyd is damn expensive and they also market themselves as a family-friendly sports club, so I think they should invest in whatever will make the pool safer, whether that's one of the alarms a PP mentioned (sounds sensible) and/or more lifeguards.

@ColumbaPalumbus parents are, ya know, meant to look after their children. They very clearly failed.

This is not the fault of a 17 yo life guard watching a pool full of people.

If you have a child who cannot swim you either watch them like a hawk or physically hold onto them until you can give them your attention.

Why are people saying he's blaming the lifeguard? Are they reading a different article? Nowhere does it say he's blaming the 17-year-old lifeguard It says he has concerns about the health and safety practices at the club, particularly the visibility lifeguards have. There's no mention of blame being apportioned to the specific lifeguard, who is mentioned in the article because he had to appear at the inquest as would be normal.

'Giving evidence at an inquest in Wakefield on Monday, Mr Wright criticised the visibility life guards had at the poolside. He said: ‘We, as a family, are concerned at the levels of health and safety at the David Lloyd pool on the day Rocco died and hope they have been resolved – especially the life guard visibility at the pool area.'

When I was lifeguarding I would always look round the pool and make sure I knew which kid was with which adult. Then I would sort of check out which parents looked like they were on it and which looked a bit more lax.
In this situation it sounds like the boy was by himself, at least briefly.
The lifeguard should have noticed a kid by himself and paid attention to him. He should have. I want to not 'blame' him, but he should have noticed. So that if the kid did make a run for the pool the lifeguard would have been right there.
And the dad should have been extra careful near the pool.
I think they are both responsible. How sad that they both have to live with this.