The elderly can be a gift to their families, serving as a close tie to past generations, recounting decades that others only read about, and giving wise advice. Younger families can return the favor by helping their relatives account for deficits that age may predispose them to, such as the inability to climb from a pool if they fall in, or lacking a full grasp of pool safety for seniors.
Pool Safety for Seniors: Three Helpful Tips
Whether an elderly loved one visits your home occasionally or lives with you for assistance with care, it’s important to consider your home’s safety in relation to the person’s autonomy, including their state of mind. If your home has a pool, and your loved one has compromised health, it may be the riskiest area for the person to visit, especially alone. Here are three tips that increase pool safety for seniors, which you can use to enhance your relative’s well-being.
1. Know Your Relative’s State of Health
If your relative has a serious health condition, you probably already know about it. However, if the person takes medication, this factor can be as important for assessing their safety as the condition for which the medicine is taken. As physicians commonly remark, meds can have a more profound effect on seniors than they do on younger people. For example, the effect of a sedative may be more pronounced because the person’s body processes the med slower.
You may be able to learn about your loved one’s health directly from them. If not, and you have another family member or caregiver who is highly involved in your relative’s health care, that person may be the repository of information you need.
Whatever you do, seek the information as tactfully as possible to help preserve your loved one’s dignity. Having a good understanding of the person’s health allows you to monitor them more accurately when they are near the pool.
2. Educate Your Relative About the Pool
Another tip that helps increase pool safety for seniors is a simple one: educate your loved one about the potential dangers of the pool site. If your loved one has the cognizance to converse with you, and they retain a clear memory of what was said, simply educating them about the potential danger of entering the pool site alone can go a long way toward preventing them from doing it. This tip is especially crucial if the person regularly walks the exterior of your property alone.
When educating your relative about the potential dangers of accessing the pool site on their own, try not to use scare tactics, such as describing how horrific it feels to someone when they drown. Simply explain that, if they were to accidentally fall into the water, and no one was there to help them, there might be no way for them to easily reach safety. Again, this tip is specifically aimed at elders who have the capacity to understand and remember what is said.
3. Implement Strong Pool Safety Barriers
Regardless of your relative’s overall state of health, implementing swimming pool barriers provides the greatest assurance that the person will not become the victim of a drowning accident. This is the most essential strategy for pool safety for seniors, and there are three basic types of barriers that you can get from A Safe Pool to establish a strong perimeter:
- Removable Pool Fencing – Our removable pool fencing slides into drilled holes around the pool to provide a complete barrier to entry. The fencing is comprised of mesh panels that allow you to look through them and see your swimming pool clearly. The drilled holes are covered with color-coordinated caps when the fence is removed.
- Pool Safety Nets – Our pool safety nets have square holes that are too small for the head or body of an infant or toddler to slip through. Completely covering the swimming pool surface, the highly durable netting makes it practically impossible for your elderly loved one to move past the barrier, and enter the swimming pool without assistance.
- Pool Safety Covers – Our pool safety covers contain no holes and completely overlay the pool surface with an opaque barrier. When properly installed, the barrier is so resilient that an adult can walk across it, without the barrier tearing and allowing a person to fall into the swimming pool. The cover can also serve as a leaf pool cover.
A Safe Pool customizes these safety barriers based on a firsthand inspection of your site, so they conform to the specific measurements of the area. Inspections and estimates are free.
Conclusion
There are several ways to enhance pool safety for seniors, but the most foolproof strategy is to outfit your pool with a strong safety barrier during hours of nonuse. If your elderly loved one happens to enter the pool area alone, barriers from A Safe Pool provide great assurance that the person will not become the victim of a drowning accident. We proudly supply swimming pool safety barriers to all U.S. locations. Please contact us today to schedule a free estimate.
