WASA Disability Swimming

WASA Disability Swimming is a not-for-profit programme which offers swimming instruction to children between the ages of 6-18 with a wide variety of disabilities, helping them to swim and enjoy the water to the best of their individual level of ability.

In addition to our regular lessons for children, we offer a Supported Family Swim for swimmers who are 19-25, during which parents can swim with their young adults and other family members, supervised by teachers.

Our goal is to get everyone in the water safely and enjoyably. To this end, we also encourage parents and siblings to swim during the session when there is capacity, and we can sometimes offer instruction to parents who would like to be able to swim confidently with their children.

WASA_DS benefits more than just the disabled swimmers. Their families, the young people who become teachers and the senior teachers who mentor and support them all get something out of it. The swimmers learn to love the water. Parents and siblings can swim for relaxation and exercise, or to gain confidence. Parents meet other parents on poolside to exchange resources and support. Teachers gain valuable experience working with a varied range of people. Training and mentoring are provided both within the sessions and outside, as teachers are encouraged and supported in obtaining professional accreditation.

The Programme is a not-for-profit organisation. We keep the swimmers' fee as low as we can and rely on volunteers, donations, support from Enable (Wandsworth Council) and fundraising.

Instructors are drawn from competitive swimming clubs, professional swimming teachers, volunteers from the Duke of Edinburgh Award programme and other volunteering organisations. The 30-minute sessions are taught one-to-one, often with a second teacher augmenting.

Fundraising is essential to keep the swimmers' fee as low as possible, offer swimming scholarships, maintain equipment, pool toys and swimming aids. With the cost of living and fuel prices rising, we expect our base costs to increase over the next few years. The Programme will require extra funds to cover these ongoing increases, with an aspiration to continue supporting the swimmers and families we currently host, and expand to new swimmers in the future.

Emma Watson is a volunteer swim teacher and Maggie Thurlow is Hon Treasurer WASA. This page is set up to receive donations for Wandsworth Amateur Swimming Association Disability Swimming (WASA_DS) fundraising activities.

In 2022, we fundraised to purchase a new hoist for the programme, watch this video to see what we do and why we needed a hoist: