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Chris launches Leadership Essentials, a revolutionary set of training tools that allows you to train staff as soon as you hire them.  Read More
 
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Home arrow Publications arrow Online Articles arrow Can I Trust My Child’s Camp Counselor? - 2007
Can I Trust My Child’s Camp Counselor? - 2007 Print E-mail
Behold the question every parent ponders before and after the camp season. The good news is that hiring protocols and staff training programs at most high quality camps prevent anyone with ulterior or unsavory motives from ever becoming a part of the camp family. Whew. The bad news is that every summer, a tiny fraction of the millions of boys and girls who attend camps in the US and Canada are either mistreated by a camp staff member during the season or drawn into an inappropriate relationship sometime after. I believe that even a tiny fraction is unacceptable, so I want to share the keys to protecting your child.

Readers familiar with my work know what a tremendous advocate I am for youth camping. Having worked for decades with the American Camp Association, the Ontario Camp Association, the International Association of Burn Camps, the Children's Oncology Camping Association, the Diabetes Camping Association, and other venerable professional camp organizations, I understand what a positive and powerful developmental growth experience camp is for young people. [By the way, if you'd like to learn more about research on the positive outcomes of camp, visit acacamps.org/research and download the report called "Directions."]

I am also a tremendous advocate of child safety. As a clinical psychologist and waterfront director with two little children of my own, I'm probably one of the most safety-conscious people you'll meet. Indeed, every summer, I bet my staff $500 that they'll never catch me in any of our 64 camp boats without a life jacket. I've yet to lose that bet. I also teach my children about safe and unsafe touch so they understand the difference and could stop and report an inappropriate advance. Even if it happened at camp.

Of course, camp and safety go hand-in-hand. Campers do engage in risky activities at camp, such as swimming, rock climbing, and horseback riding, but camp directors ensure that every reasonable precaution is in place to minimize the occurrence of accidents. Those precautions are part of what make risky activities fun not frightening. Those precautions are also what make parents trust high-quality camps. Naturally, smart parents understand that no camp is accident-free, but when they can see the safety equipment in place, they are reassured. If you were to walk around camp, you could see the lifeguards on duty, see the safety harnesses on the climbers, and see the helmets on the riders.

Sadly, nobody could ever see the potential for inappropriate behavior between a camp staff member and a child. But that invisibility should not stop you from protecting your child from predators by asking the right questions and looking for the warning signs of an unhealthy relationship.

As I outline in my The Summer Camp Handbook, you should begin by teaching your child how to protect him- or herself from unsafe touch. Norman Friedman's book Inoculating Your Child Against Sexual Abuse provides perfect guidance here. Next, conduct the search for your child's camp carefully. This careful search has many components but the three that most parents neglect are:
  1. Finding out whether the camp is accredited and by whom
  2. Discussing the director's education and experience
  3. Asking about the camp's hiring protocols and staff training program.
In these three neglected domains, here's what you should verify:
  1. The camp you send your child to should be accredited. In the US, this means accredited by the American Camp Association. In Canada, this means accredited by the province in which the camp operates. There are some high-quality non-accredited camps, but you'll need to personally verify hundreds of health, safety, and personnel standards before resting assured you've chosen wisely. Use the ACA's new Accreditation Standards for Camp Programs and Services as your guide.
  2. Your camp's director should have years of youth development experience under his or her belt and should participate in continuing professional education-such as camp conferences-each year. Find out what their professional credentials are, what conferences or seminars they last attended, and what other camp experience they have.
  3. The camp should freely share with you its protocols for conducting required background checks. These could include criminal background checks, but that will only uncover whether a person has been convicted of a felony in the state or province in which the check is conducted. More meaningful is the process of religiously checking a staff member's references. Finding people who have known the prospective hire well and who have witnessed their work with children is better than verifying whether or not they are not a convicted felon. The camp should also freely share with you its staff training program. This program should include modules on appropriate touch, discipline, and communication with children.
Finally, ask the camp director what off-season communication he or she officially sanctions between campers and staff. Because of the expansive and unregulated nature of the Internet, most camp directors do not permit the open exchange of e-mail addresses and screen names between campers and staff. Instead, they establish password-protected, supervised chat rooms on the camp's own web site. (Supervised means that the camp director is reading every entry before posting it.) Other camp directors are allowing no Internet communication, in favor of handwritten postcards, which are carefully read before mailing. Find out today what your camp's off-season communication policy is and steer away from anything that is unsupervised or does not permit parental access.

Lest your love and concern for your child evolve into protective paranoia, let me emphasize that the personal relationships that form between your child and the camp staff are typically wonderful. They are what kids remember most about camp and what they crave during the off-season. These relationships are also the necessary foundation for growth. Without those caring relationships, there can be no increased self-esteem or independence, no growth in social-skills or confidence. The key to a positive experience at camp is a healthy, nurturing relationship between children and their caregivers at camp. For this reason, it is my sincere hope that the principles outlined above will help you and your son or daughter find a camp where those healthy relationships flourish.

Special Footnote for Camp Directors: In addition to careful screening, thoughtful hiring procedures, and a thorough staff training protocol, there exists a new tool to help camp directors prevent predators from entering camps. MySummerCamps.com has created a National Criminal Database & National Sex Offender Search for camps. This service permits any camp director to perform background checks on his or her staff and volunteers at a very reasonable price. The turnaround time for these background checks is instantaneous because it is all done online. I recommend supplementing reference checks with this important background search.
 
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