The teachers
Every teacher holds a Swim Wales teaching qualification, an enhanced DBS check, a pool lifeguard or rescue award and first aid, and teaches the same classes all year so your child sees the same face every week. Three hold the qualification for teaching swimmers with disabilities.
Swam for Cardiff as a teenager, taught at a leisure centre for twelve years, and set up Splash in 2012 with forty swimmers and one lane. Swim Wales Level 2 teacher, baby and pre-school specialist, tutor for new teachers, and the person who takes the Tuesday morning babies herself. Enhanced DBS, pool lifeguard qualification, first aid.
County breaststroker until twenty, joined Splash in 2018 and runs the stages programme and the adult classes. Swim Wales Level 2 teacher, adult and triathlon swim coach, and the teacher the nervous adults ask for by name. Enhanced DBS, pool lifeguard, first aid.
In the water and on the side
Safety
Level 2 for every lead teacher, Level 1 for assistants working beside them, renewed with CPD. Baby and pre-school, adult, and disability swimming qualifications on top for the teachers who need them.
Every teacher and the office hold an enhanced DBS on the update service and do the Swim Wales safeguarding course. Gemma is the safeguarding lead and the policy is on the gallery noticeboard.
The leisure centre puts a lifeguard on the poolside for every lesson, and every teacher also holds a pool lifeguard or rescue award. Ratios are set by the stage and never exceeded.
Every teacher holds first aid; every incident, however small, is written up and told to the parent at the end of the lesson. Photography is not allowed on the poolside or in the gallery.
Tell us the swimmer's age and what they can do now, and we offer a class at the right stage with a space, usually within the week. The first ten minutes are an assessment and the teacher moves them that day if the stage is wrong. Or ring Carys in the office.