The Swimming Teachers’ Association STA has joined forces with the newly-established Children’s Activities Association (CAA), which aims to establish a recognisable benchmark for standards across all organised youth activities.

The CAA wants to make it easier for parents to identify ‘best-practice’ activity providers who pay particular attention to child-centric issues such as safeguarding, health and safety, training and insurance. It hopes to establish consistent standards and accreditation, while giving more children the opportunity to experience a wider range of organised activities.

As the world’s largest independent swimming teaching and lifesaving organisation, STA is eager to support the raising of standards across the youth swimming sector, which makes up a significant proportion of children’s activities.

“Alongside the popularity of baby swimming, the private swim school market, in particular, has grown significantly over the past decade,” said Kayle Burgham, technical manager for Aquatics at STA.

“This level of choice has made it difficult for parents and carers to know which is a good swim school or a not – and for swim schools to differentiate their services. By bringing the children’s activity industry together, from ballet to sensory to swimming, the CAA marque will provide parents with a common recognisable accreditation badge.”

All STAmark (the STA’s quality accreditation) swim schools have the prerequisites for the CAA marque and the new collaboration means they can enjoy discounted CAA membership – which offers a range of business support and promotional benefits.

Mike Dodd, CAA chair said: “No parent would compromise on their child’s safety and wellbeing and the CAA has met a long awaited demand to ensure parents can now just look for the CAA logo to be sure providers have agreed to a Code of Practice regarding vital child-centric issues such as Safeguarding, health and safety, training, insurance and more.”

“Swimming is one of the most popular children’s activities here in the UK, so we are delighted to be working with STA because they are an independent, not-for-profit swimming body that represent the majority of the UK swim school market.”