Thursday night saw the first club training session since March 2020, when the whole country was suddenly launched into a complete unknown, called lockdown by the goverment due the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Since then restrictions have been relaxed several times to a point where from about mid August, we (RLSS Poole) were able start making plans with EveryoneActive, to get the club started again after such a long downtime.
We have had to produce new risk assesments and method statements to ensure that we are COVID-19 compliant. We also had to update other documents such as our Safeguarding Policy, Trainers Guidelines and kick start DBS checks on most of our trainers as they had time expired during lockdown.
Another area we looked at was all our training equipment, and as such we have been through all our equipment in the pool store and thrown away all our old, worn out or not used equipment to make room for all the new training aids that we are curently buying, to enable us all to carry out non contact rescue training. We have also purchased a whole bunch of PPE which will be stored at the pool to allow us to clean equipment thoroughly to protect everyone from cross contamination as best as we can.
Another area we considered and are curently in the process completing, is the buying for every club member that has returned to training with us, their very own resus pocket face mask with hard case and one way valve. These will be used each week at training and members should remember to bring them along each week so they can get used to using them.
On top all that we had to reach out to all our existing members and trainers to find out how many members actually wanted to return to club training. We have to say that it is a testiment to the club tbat tbe uptake was close to 90%. With 55 members and 12 trainers signing up to wanting to continue training with the club.
A little bit of jiggery pokery and we managed to create enough groups with enough members, to accomdate all those who wanted to return, even with all the operating restrictions being imposed on us by the dolphin pool, which was great news as that meant that nobody was left disappointed. 😊
So, last Thursday (17th Sep) saw our first session back, and with a full house in the Rookies Session and almost a full house in the later session, we saw close to 55 members and 12 trainers back at the pool all thoroughly enjoying themselves and giving the impression tbat they were all very pleased to be back.
Well done everyone, lets remember to stay safe and hopefulyl if lockdowns don’t come back in, that we can continue as we did last Thursday.
#staysafe