How the American Red Cross Endangers Children
The American Red Cross is a $3 billion dollar global behemoth built on relentless marketing and brand loyalty, but shocking program oversight gaps jeopardize millions of unwitting citizens, including children.
Meow Meow Foundation has discovered that Red Cross representatives can easily exploit such gaps to offer fraudulent lifeguard and water safety certifications.
A Los Angeles area instructor recently admitted that he fraudulently certified himself and, apparently, upwards of a hundred students or more without providing required training or testing. Red Cross officials have since banned him for life. A former Red Cross instructor told Meow Meow Foundation that she is familiar with other instances of similar fraud.
According to Red Cross documents, lifeguard candidates must complete a rigorous pre-course swim skills test. If successful, candidates train both in the pool and in the classroom before taking a final exam that requires a score of 80% or better.
Depending upon the instructor or the facility that provides Red Cross certification training, certification course fees range from $250-$350 per trainee. The Red Cross makes a portion of that fee while the instructor or facility retains the balance.
Lifeguards and instructors must re-certify every two years, which guarantees enormous cyclical revenue for the Red Cross.
Not only are these instructors required to be certified lifeguards, they must also be certified lifeguard instructors who complete additional training at an additional cost.
The issue at hand is that nobody seems to oversee them once they gain instructor status.
Instructors can access the Red Cross database to essentially certify students, even if those students were never properly trained or tested. They merely have to submit a list of trainees as if those trainees have earned certification.
The Red Cross does not apparently require instructors to prove that they trained or tested anyone; no test sheets, no training notes, no video evidence, no sworn affidavits, nothing.
The Los Angeles instructor who, for years, fraudulently certified trainees also seems to have fraudulently certified himself as a lifeguard, lifeguard instructor, water safety instructor and potentially other aquatics titles.
According to multiple documents, Red Cross regional program managers were aware of these certifications but neither challenged their validity nor required proof of training.
Meow Meow Foundation possesses fraudulently produced documents that prove how easy it is for Red Cross instructors to game the system without unwanted attention. These documents are currently part of an investigation after which they will be publicly available for review.
Red Cross lifeguard certification programs also include training in CPR, First Aid and AED (automated external defibrillator). Therefore, anyone fraudulently certified as a lifeguard is also fraudulently providing these additional lifesaving services.
In other words, the Red Cross works on a certification honor system, despite the fact that it authorizes lifesaving services — a stunning revelation that affects tens of millions of Americans.
The United States has approximately 310,000 public pools and nearly 100,000 miles of shoreline, both interior and exterior. No other entity provides more lifeguard certifications than the American Red Cross.
According to financial documents, the ARC earns approximately $150 million from such annual certification programs. It is unclear how many lifeguards and water safety instructors are certified at any given time, although that number is expected to be in the tens of thousands.
The Red Cross also operates a Licensed Training Provider network (LTP). Facilities that use Red Cross lifeguard instructors must sign a contract, hold proper insurance, possess a business license and pay an annual fee to the Red Cross in order to offer on-site certification services.
Meow Meow Foundation has made another unsettling discovery related to these agreements. The Red Cross does not necessarily audit these facilities to check whether they even have swimming pools or bodies of water. In the case of the fraudulent Los Angeles Red Cross instructor, Red Cross program directors never — over a decade — visited the LTP pool to see if it existed, let alone determine if it met health, safety and program requirements.
For the second year in a row, Red Cross officials adapted lifeguard training and certification, allowing guards to take an online provisional course as a proxy for traditional required training. Officials said the lifeguard shortage made it difficult for many public swimming pools to open by Memorial Day weekend, regardless of the dangers this might pose.
Meow Meow Foundation offered to help the Red Cross overhaul these flagrant if not lethal failures. The foundation crafted multiple letters to top officials who declined the offer.
Meow Meow Foundation urges guardians to ask pool and open water facilities about their Red Cross representatives and their training before entrusting them with lifesaving care.