| Summer Therapeutic Program |
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Summer Program Coordinators:
HCRS summer camp opens doors, builds skills for high-needs kids… and, oh yeah, it’s fun too Bring together 70 high-needs kids and as many adult staffers for six weeks over the summer and you’re bound to see some surprising results. That’s what clinical supervisor Jim Olson has discovered running HCRS’ therapeutic summer camp for children with mental health disorders in Brattleboro. Similar programs run in Springfield and Hartford. “These are kids who don’t fit into their school community, their family community, or their larger community,” says Olson. “So what we do at camp is create a community. It’s a therapeutic environment masked as a summer camp.” To that end, Olson’s staff tries to avoid “therapizing” kids, focusing instead on helping them build positive relationships with peers and adults, learn critical life skills, and have fun. That may sound like typical summer fare for most kids, but for HCRS’ campers it’s the only game in town. With a one-to-one adult to camper ratio and rigorously trained staff, HCRS’ no-fee camp is tailor-made for kids who wouldn’t make it in settings with fewer supports. “Many of these kids stress their families, and they often come from families who are already stressed and don’t have a lot of resources,” says Olson. “What we hear from the community constantly is that this is filling a huge hole.” Without the camp, says Olson, “a lot of these kids would be hanging around not doing much, downtown getting into trouble, being victimized.” Instead, the campers, age 5 to 14, find opportunities to bond while negotiating a game of capture the flag, cooling off at an area swimming hole, painting in the camp’s “quiet space,” or experiencing their first hike up a mountain. “We don’t spend a lot of money on activities,” says Olson. “We don’t need to. Our camp extends into Vermont.” And while those activities may look like play, the reality is that campers are hard at work throughout the day learning to manage their behaviors, problem solve, and work together—critical skills that don’t go unnoticed when they return to their homes and schools. For the most part, that learning takes place in the context of group activities, many of which put kids in stress-triggering situations they’re likely to encounter over and over again in their school careers and throughout their lives—and hopefully begin to master. “One of our kids couldn’t handle competitive activities,” recalls Olson. “In a non-therapeutic setting, they probably would have just had him avoid games, but he really liked them and they were actually a strength for him. So we decided that the best thing to do was to work through it with him.” “We spent a lot of time pulling him out of the game and processing with him how to manage his tolerance for losing. Hopefully, when he’s back at school, he’ll have internalized those skills so that rather than needing to control the whole game, he’ll know how to play with other kids so that they’ll want to play with him.” This type of learning-by-doing works in part because of the close ties formed between kids and staff—relationships that are key to the transformations kids undergo in their years at camp. “We had one kid who was really hard to manage,” recalls Olson. “One day he got hold of a metal pole and kept swinging it around, swearing at us… it didn’t look good. But my goal has always been that once we get a kid, there’s nobody we can’t keep.” Today, after six summers at camp, it’s a “whole different world” for that young man, says Olson. “He’s learned to verbalize, cool down in a safe place, and return when he’s able to communicate. He knows that even at his worst moments, we really care about him and want him to do well. Those are the sorts of changes we see in kids who come back year after year.” Keeping the camp small enough to build those kinds of mentoring relationships is essential, Olson believes (though he does hope to expand services for older adolescents, ideally through a program focusing on job preparation). Despite his regrets at having to turn away kids, Olson recognizes that the program’s success stems in large part on its ability to remain small, flexible, and responsive to each camper’s needs. That responsiveness extends to the camp’s programming, much of which is based on the particular interests and skills of each year’s campers and staff. That may mean an emphasis on break dancing one year and on mask making the next. Together, Olson and the staff brainstorm to determine the therapeutic value of each activity—how to help campers extract meaning from the skills they’re learning. That doesn’t always turn out the way it’s planned. “We recently tried out ceramics with the kids, which I was very excited about because I have a background in it,” says Olson. “The thing about pit firing and making pottery is that it’s as much about failure as it is about success. You put objects into the fire and sometimes half of them fail, so you really have to adjust your thinking. How do I accept the idea of taking a chance, of dealing with disappointment, frustration, sadness? Unexpectedly, this became an activity about taking risks and when there’s loss, talking about it. Afterwards, everybody came together to throw wishes into the fire.” “It definitely wasn’t what we expected,” admits Olson. “But it turned into a really wonderful community event. Kids sometimes show us what their needs are.” |
HCRS provides three and six week summer therapeutic camps for youth with a significant emotional disturbance who would not thrive in a traditional summer camp program. We combine outdoor recreational activities with behavioral and therapeutic programming to teach and reinforce positive social skills and behaviors. These Summer Therapeutic Programs are provided in each of our three locations.© 2007 HCRS. All rights reserved.