Prior to this, the camp had welcomed occasional campers with mild developmental disabilities. However, the camp was unable to provide significant extra supports to children with disabilities and thus could not include children with more severe disabil ities or with higher levels of support needs.
With financial and technical assistance from Transitional Living Services, Inc., Camp Talooli has been able to include several children with significant support needs in the last 3 years. Transitional Living Services, Inc. is an agency which provides both residential services and family support services. Through use of New York State family support funds, the agency provides funding, technical assistance, and consultation to enable programs and organizations (afterschool programs, camps, neighborhood centers, and the like) to include children and teens with developmental disabilities. The funding allows the camp to hire an extra counselor to help support the campers with special needs, while consultation and technical assistance are provided in the areas of meetings with families to obtain needed information, staff training, and ongoing problem solving. For the campers with disabilities, the experience offers time for fun, in a new setting with new people; and for their families, it may offer a cha nce for respite. TLS also provides some funds to pay for transportation and special equipment, enabling some children with special needs to come to camp who otherwise would not be able to.
The camp generally has about 140 children per session, four to six of whom might be campers with a range of disabilities and support needs. Over the course of a summer, camp sessions vary to include day camp, resident camp, and a canoe trip camping se ssion.Some of the experiences they have had and lessons they have learned include the following:
Building an organization-wide base of support:
From the outset, the camp director was convinced that including children with severe disabilities was a possible and positive thing to do. This experience has demonstrated to her that “all of the children benefit” for this integration. After the first summer, the camp’s Board of Directors was still a bit hesitant about the prospects of involving children with severe disabilities on an ongoing basis. However, with assistance from TLS, a slide show at one of their meetings, describing the campers’ and st aff members’ experience the first summer helped instill a commitment to this effort. Finally, as the camp has become better at supporting counselors who assist the children with disabilities, the counselors have begun to feel more positive about their experience and confident in their abilities.
Contact with parents:
Before a child with special needs comes to camp, one of the most important things, for staff at Camp Talooli, was finding out from the parent or other caregiver about the child’s needs, likes and dislikes, communication methods and styles, and what types of support or assistance are most helpful or least helpful. Sometimes this information can be conveyed in written form, such as with the camp application, or by telephone conversations. At other times, it is helpful to spend time with the child and his/ her parents (and maybe with the teacher at school also). A consultant from TLS conducted these home visits. Next year, the camp’s Assistant Director will begin accompanying the consultant on these visits and will eventually assume this role, with extra financial support for her work provided by TLS.
Learning what works–strategies for support:
In addition to the strategy discussed above, of gaining information, the camp staff have developed a number of other strategies which assist them in their support and inclusion of children with disabilities. These include things such as:
- making the camp more physically accessible. To this end, for example, the camp obtained a grant from a local foundation, which helped them construct a wheelchair accessible path from the main lodge to the swimming area.
- using adaptations to assist in communication with children. For some children, they have found it is helpful to construct a daily schedule of pictures to enable them to understand and remember which activity is next. Staff members have also figured out more ways to give children some additional choices or options within daily camp routines and activities.
- helping all children to abide by the same general camp rules. Peter, who is labeled autistic and hearing impaired, has been coming to Camp Talooli for 3 years now. The camp director reflected, “His first year, we basically let him do whatever he wanted, and we just followed him around.” Now, they assist him to follow the same routine as other campers, with some flexibility and choices built in, based on his needs.
- matching kids with counselors. Attention is paid to creating a “good match,” personality wise, between counselors and the children with special needs.
- supporting counselors who have a child with disabilities in their cabin in ways such as: precamp training (for all counselors and camp staff); sharing information between counselors and other camp staff; providing an extra counselor for support, where needed, in cabins having a child with special needs; teaming counselors together, one of whom may know the child from a previous year, may have supported other children with disabilities in the past, or just may feel more comfortable doing so. For a few children with high levels of needs, the TLS consultant spent the full week at camp, assisting–both with direct support of the child and with brainstorming and problem solving ideas for support.
Overall, after 3 years of experience, camp staff are much more confident in their own ability to generate strategies for support. And, they are less afraid to make mistakes. As the director put it, “We don’t get as frustrated when our strategies don’ t work. In the past, we thought it should work perfectly. This year, we are more prepared to deal with problems that may arise.”
The effort to include children with severe disabilities at Camp Talooli represents a positive example of collaboration between a camp and a human service agency. To be successful, it was necessary for them to pool their resources and expertise: camp staff were willing to learn from agency staff, and agency staff learned from camp staff and embedded their efforts within the camp’s values, traditions, and routines. Over time, the camp has taken increasing ownership for the inclusion of children with severe disabilities–it has moved from being a “TLS project” with “TLS kids,” to a Camp Talooli effort and commitment to include and support these children with special needs. In recognition of their efforts, last year the Camp Fire Council was the recipient of the JCPenny/National Organization on Disability Award, presented annually to selected national, nondisability organziations to recognize programs that increase acceptance and participation of people with disabilities. Further collaborative efforts of this type, between community organizations and human services agencies, will increase the likelihood that children with severe and multiple impairments will become participating members of many community groups and organizations.
PETER
Peter has been attending Camp Talooli for 3 years now. He is 11 years old, and has a label of autism and is hearing impaired. He used to go to camp through a program that provides special supports for groups of campers with hearing impairments. However, according to staff at Camp Talooli, this program decided they could not serve him because of some behaviors and difficulty understanding his communication.
Subsequently, Peter began taking part in Camp Talooli alongside many other campers without disabilities, with support. The support, however, has become more effective over the years, as camp staff have gotten to know him better and learned more effect ive strategies for supporting him. Camp staff report that, “When he first came here, we basically let him do what he wanted. We thought we had no way of communicating with him.”
Since that time, things have changed markedly. A consultant from Transitional Living Services, Inc., a local human service agency, spent time with Peter’s parents and at his school, learning more about effective ways to support him and communicate wit h him. She has passed this information along to camp staff, spending time with them at camp.
When he comes to camp now, Peter has picture schedules so he knows the routine, and is offered a variety of choices at different times during the day, but he also now follows the same general routine as other campers. Attempt is made to put him in a cabin with at least one counselor who knows him, as well as a second counselor for extra support. Overall, these support and communication efforts have contributed to making camp a positive and fun experience for Peter and those around him.