Best Practices in Drowning & Near Drowning Prevention

I would like to hear from anyone involved in developing, maintaining,
or actively working on a drowning/near-drowning prevention team or from
people who have personally experienced a program that they attribute to
preventing a drowning or near drowning. Specifically would like to know
what has proven to work in reducing the statistics. What has worked to
change the mind-set that "This won't happen to me"? By proven I mean
having data to back it up. And yes I am aware of the problems in data
points on the subject of drowning & near drowning, so having said that,
based on the best we have today, what is working? I include Drowning &
Near-drowning because to me the goal would be to reduce both. I know
there are agencies studying this, but have not seen any results
published to date.

I wanted to also add that I have already researched www.infantswim.com,
www.safestart.cc www.redcross.org and many more programs in use, what I
do not know is what results others are having, what adaptations they
have found work, or even better yet what has NOT worked. All replies
would be appreciated. I read some postings from last year, one in fact
about supervision (it seemed the author could not understand how anyone
could have lost track of the child long enough for them to drown) You
need to understand that it CAN happen to even the most loving and
careful people. I would be happy to expand on that if you like, the
biggest awareness problem is getting people to understand it CAN happen
to you, to anyone, other layers of defense need to be in place for the
times that a child does escape supervision, because it only takes "A
Moment in Time"
Catherine wrote:
I would like to hear from anyone involved in developing, maintaining,
or actively working on a drowning/near-drowning prevention team or
from
people who have personally experienced a program that they attribute
to
preventing a drowning or near drowning. Specifically would like to
know
what has proven to work in reducing the statistics. What has worked
to
change the mind-set that "This won't happen to me"? By proven I mean
having data to back it up. And yes I am aware of the problems in data
points on the subject of drowning & near drowning, so having said
that,
based on the best we have today, what is working? I include Drowning
&
Near-drowning because to me the goal would be to reduce both. I know
there are agencies studying this, but have not seen any results
published to date.

Not my field of interest but....

Might be worth finding a copy of this paper or more work by same author?....

Ref: Moran K., Stanley T. & Coggan, C. (2004). "Parental
perceptions of toddler water safety". Unpublished paper presented at
the 7th Australian and 2nd Pacific Rim Injury Prevention Conference,
15-17 September, Mackay, Queensland.

"Recent New Zealand research from Moran, Stanley and
Cogan (2004) revealed that the majority of parents who enrol
their toddler in lessons did so to increase water safety and
water confidence of their child. However the majority of
parents believed that the protective effects of learning to
swim were the best way to prevent toddler drowning. This is
a misconception that protective factors from toddler lessons
alone prevent toddler drowning"

The above was found in this Document...

http://www.nsw.royallifesaving.com.a...res/3_3984.pdf