Grants to teach parents life saving skills
Royal Life Saving WA is urging community groups across the state to apply for our Heart Beat Club grants, which assist parents and careers to learn vital first aid and CPR skills. The grants were established six years ago, under the Keep Watch toddler drowning prevention program, to address the fact that in many cases of child drowning, a parent or carer will be the first person on the scene and applying appropriate CPR skills may be the difference between life and death.
The Heart Beat Club community education course is specifically designed for parents and carers of children under the age of five, with the three-hour session covering child and infant CPR and first aid for common childhood injuries such as choking, poisoning and burns. The aim of the grants is to provide free courses for high-risk parents and carers, with the goal of increasing their capacity to respond in an emergency and ultimately reduce the number of fatal drownings and serious drowning-related injuries in children under five years across our state.
Applications are invited from Western Australian community organisations who work with parents who may have barriers to accessing first aid training. This includes people from Aboriginal and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse backgrounds, adolescent parents and those at-risk due to socio-economic factors. In 2019/20, around 250 parents and carers of children under five years attended one of 22 courses offered through the grants.
Royal Life Saving WA would like to thank the WA Department of Health for providing the funding for the Heart Beat Club grants via the Keep Watch toddler drowning prevention program. We’d also like to acknowledge the amazing efforts of the Royal Life Saving community trainers who delivered the Heart Beat Club sessions in a variety of locations to a wide range of participants.
If your organisation supports parents and families and you would like to apply to host a course, you can find further information and the application form at the link below.
