Girl with special needs told to leave Kitchener pool after using floatie

City meets with family over pool floaty incident From CTV Kitchener's Leighanne Evans: The family says they were singled out for the floaty that their daughter, who has special needs, uses.

A family says they were asked to leave a Kitchener pool for allowing their daughter with special needs to use a pool floatie.

Selina Wheaton and her family were at the Kiwanis Park pool on Sunday, equipped with a pool floatie with a covered centre. The cover helps keep the happy five year old out of the water.

“That allows Selina to go into the pool. When the pool is too cold she can't be submerged completely,” her father Chris Wheaton says. “Her sensory issues just kick in and she tenses right up and we don't know whether it’s painful or just uncomfortable.”

Selina has cri-du-chat syndrome, which means she’s missing a small piece of the p arm of the fifth chromosome.

“With that comes physical and mental delays and we just go on with life and give her therapies and make sure that she’s as happy as possible so she learns the best she can,” Wheaton said.

The family says they had been at the pool for several hours when a lifeguard came by and asked them to leave on the grounds that the floatie was larger than the pool’s three-foot maximum.

“Now, we were told that it was supposed to be smaller than three feet,” explains Chris Wheaton. “Well, we got out a measuring tape, and that’s 32 inches.”

He says that the person in charge then made an announcement that all floaties had to be removed.

On Wednesday, the Wheaton family met with city officials at Kitchener city hall.

“We all acknowledge there are things to be learned and times when we can do better, and this is one of those instances,” says Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic.

He says staff has been reminded about their duty to balance accommodation with overall public safety needs.

"In this particular instance, quite frankly, the wrong call was made, and we needed to be in a situation where we balanced that out a little more strongly," Vrbanovic says.

Chris Wheaton is pushing for different policies for kids with special needs, such as different wristbands to notify staff.

City officials are meeting with him again on Friday.

With reporting from Leighanne Evans and Marta Czurylowicz