P-05-868 Water Safety/Drowning Prevention and the effects of Cold Water Shock to be taught in all Schools in Wales, Correspondence – Petitioner to Committee

Date: 12/5/2019

Ein cyf/Our ref: P-05-868.

Eich cyf/Your ref: LG/05832/19

carmswatergmail.com 

Hello/Shwmae,

Please find our Chair's response to the attached letter from Lesley Griffiths AC/AM.

· Carmarthenshire Water Safety Partnership (CWSP) is pleased to hear, as members of the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSSUK) for the last four years, that discussions have taken place. As a proud Welsh charity, we champion any progress to improve water safety and a drowning prevention strategy in Wales. The Water Safety Scotland model should provide all the information on how to achieve a Water Safety Wales strategy you need in partnership with RoSPA/RLSSUK.

· Whilst education, as Lesley rightly points out in her summary, is key to prevent historically unacceptable water related fatalities across the UK, education has to be visible to all and in our charities experiences engaging with secondary schools in West Wales, this is not always the case and headmasters approach us to spread the wider messages to the whole school - which leads us to believe some education initiatives are narrow in their delivery and subsequent exposure is therefore lacking. 

· CWSP sits within a communications network of multiple drowning prevention specialists, rescue services, professionals and individuals across the United Kingdom and over the last four years, I have found that DCWW is not in its entirety the best source of drowning prevention information due to their operational blanket ban on housing any lifesaving equipment at any of their open water sites. Some England based water utility companies recognize that members of the public do still get in to difficulty (whether signage is present or not) and require lifesaving equipment/interventions to reduce loss of life, and therefore have begun siting lockable lifebuoy cabinets at their sites in partnership with charities, particularly in the north of England.

CWSP is the only welsh based water safety charity who is committed to delivering visible, bi-lingual, forward thinking, community interventions in its charity areas of operation (Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion and the City & County of Swansea) mostly working Welsh families affected by fatal drownings in Wales and delivering many RLSSUK campaigns to the benefit of all and with the obvious lack of a Water Safety Strategy for Wales this work in our opinion is crucial and would welcome further support from any government departments or AC/AM's to promote our work. 

We would like to place on record our sincere thanks for Welsh Government (Transport & Infrastructure) support on completing our initiative to provide a new Emergency Services Slipway at Carmarthen's Pwll y Rifle, locally known as 'the 22', where we delivered two of the first vandal proof Lifebuoy Cabinets to be sited in Wales.

Kind regards,

Adam Whitehouse

Chair

Carmarthenshire Water Safety Partnership