Abington-Jefferson Health – Camp Charlie

Overview

Camp Charlie is a free, unique expressive arts bereavement camp run by the staff and volunteers of Safe Harbor, Abington-Jefferson Health’s peer support program for grieving children, teens and families. Camp serves children ages 6 to 12, as well as teen “buddies” ages 13 to 18, who have lost a parent or sibling. It began in 2007 and runs each June as a five-day intensive experience for healing. The activity modalities in the morning are based on the expressive arts and are specifically designed to address tasks of grieving and teaching coping skills, while the afternoons are designed to promote social support and reduce the stress of feeling isolated as campers discover they are not alone in their grief.

Camp has allowed Safe Harbor to extend its community outreach by finding a way to meet the needs of those not able to attend the regular evening support groups. The number of non-Safe Harbor campers has increased over the years; often, those campers who were initially unsure about attending go on to attend the Safe Harbor program the following support group year. In addition, Camp Charlie has provided opportunity for local bereaved teens to gain community service hours through volunteering as a camp teen buddy. The television press, donor recognition and outstanding volunteers that Camp Charlie receives benefit the overall reputation of Abington-Jefferson Health’s commitment to bettering the community and ultimately enable the camp to grow, thus helping more families who need this kind of support.

Impact

Over the past decade of service, the camp has more than doubled in size. The first camp in 2007 served 33 campers and buddies. The camp in 2016 served 65 campers and buddies, enlisting the help of 30 energetic, creative volunteers. In total, the camp has served 550 grieving children and teens from the surrounding areas. At the start of the program, all of the campers were current Safe Harbor participants. However, a concerted effort has been made to extend the program’s reach into the community through church organizations, schools and private therapists, allowing the camp to have as many as 22 campers in one season coming in as non-Safe Harbor participants. Family and participant evaluations have shown that after attending the program, 96 percent of the children and teens feel more hopeful about the future, and 79 percent feel it is easier to talk to their families about the death of their loved ones.

Lessons Learned

As the camp has grown over the years and reached more grieving children in the community, camp staff remain vigilant in their effort to make sure their goals and purpose remain clear. More campers, obviously, require the help and dedication of more volunteers, so they make certain to recruit the most positive, creative and empathetic of facilitators from their Safe Harbor program, as well as alerting potential volunteers from the hospital staff. They have found that ensuring the camp has enough “staff” and a great variety in terms of backgrounds, interests and even energy levels within the volunteer force fosters creativity and ensures campers will find someone with whom they will relate and feel comfortable.

The “teen buddy” program has also been a part of camp, which has been honed and improved over the course of its 11 years. The training these current or former Safe Harbor participants receive to best serve as mentors to the younger campers is focused on clearly outlining their duties at camp, educating them on the importance of active listening, making young campers feel welcomed and understood, and leading by example in terms of sharing their own experiences when it will help hesitant campers “open up” about their grief. A lesson learned involves the value that being a “buddy” can have for the buddies themselves in terms of the healing power of “paying it forward.”

Finally, camp staff have learned the importance of being highly organized well in advance of the start of camp. Within the camp’s chosen theme, each activity within the four modalities is carefully designed to address specific tasks of grief, and all facilitators are informed in advance of the goals and purpose of each activity on each day. It is this attention to detail that sets this grief camp apart from being just a day camp. By week’s end, the campers have been led on a mapped-out grief journey where they have explored their grief, processed it and hopefully begin their summer feeling understood and supported. The family gathering is designed to then share a bit of that journey with family members, and encourage campers to feel more comfortable sharing that experience with those who can support them outside of camp.

Future Goals

Program leaders plan to continue to provide an expressive arts bereavement camp. They are going to increase community outreach for families outside of Safe Harbor, and attract more families to Safe Harbor support groups. In addition, they plan to encourage more volunteer interest from the hospital community, and continue to attract donors for both Camp and Safe Harbor. Program leaders will present at the National Bereavement Camp Conference in 2018.

Contact: Debbie Teasdale, MSS, MLSP
Safe Harbor Program Director
Telephone: 215-481-5775
Email: deborah.teasdale@jefferson.edu