Stay-at-home dad says city swim policy is discriminatory
Local councillor Ana Bailao wants aquatics to revisit policy to make sure it meets community needs.

thestar.com
Aug. 12, 2014
By Jane Gerster

A stay-at-home dad says a citywide pool supervision policy discriminates against families with three or more children.

Kevin Putnam says his three young kids were disappointed after being turned away from High Park swimming pool Monday afternoon because of the stringent safety requirements.

If a kid is five years old or younger, adults are only allowed to take care of two of them at a time, always within arms reach. That means if Putnam wants to take Kenneth, 6, Lewis, 4, and Audra, one and a half, to the pool at the same time he needs to find another adult. Or he needs to wait until February, when Kenneth turns 7 and can pass a pool swim test.

“It’s an extremely unfair rule. There’s got to be a better way to ensure safety without preventing large families from coming to the pool,” Putnam says. “The place is fully staffed with lifeguards, like what are the lifeguards doing here if I can’t come in with my kids, right?”

While he sympathizes with disappointed families, aquatics manager Aydin Sarrafzadeh says the rigid standards were created in consultation with the Lifesaving Society more than a decade ago, following a number of Coroner’s Inquests into pool deaths.

While there are lots of lifeguards and a pool is a controlled setting, Sarrafzadeh says parents need to remember they’re not the only ones in the water.

“Imagine there are a number of parents with a number of kids... and the requirement is to be in arms reach, fully in control,” he says, “with a toddler and two other kids, if one of them gets into trouble, it would be very difficult to control all three of them.”

Kids can take a facility swim test when they turn 6 to go in the deep end, but they’re only allowed to go unsupervised if they pass the test and are at least 7 years old. No supervision is required once a kid is 10 years old and a teenager at least 14 years old can act as a supervisor.

But after hearing from Putnam and seeing a few other frustrated residents on social media, local Councillor Ana Bailao says the policy might need to be revisited. She plans to ask aquatics to take a second look at existing pool safety protections.

“There are a lot of single parents or families that have one parent home during the day with three kids that need activities, including free swimming,” she says. “We definitely have to look into this to see how to make it easier and accessible for young families.”