Nonprofit brings camp to patients at Texas Children’s The Woodlands this week
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Samantha Torres uses non-toxic paint to draw on the side of Stormy the horse during a Camp For All 2U event Wednesday, July 31, 2019 at Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands.
Samantha Torres uses non-toxic paint to draw on the side of Stormy the horse during a Camp For All 2U event Wednesday, July 31, 2019 at Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands.
Photo: Cody Bahn, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer
Samantha Torres uses non-toxic paint to draw on the side of Stormy the horse during a Camp For All 2U event Wednesday, July 31, 2019 at Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands.
Samantha Torres uses non-toxic paint to draw on the side of Stormy the horse during a Camp For All 2U event Wednesday, July 31, 2019 at Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands.
Photo: Cody Bahn, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer
Jeremiah Bradford, at 6 years old, went to camp for the first time this week.
“I thought it was going to be scary, but it’s not. It’s fun,” Bradford said as he munched on crackers and sipped lemonade in the lobby of Texas Children’s The Woodlands Hospital.
A child like Bradford, who is a patient at the hospital, may not have the ability or opportunity to go away to camp. That’s why camp came to him and about 25 other patients in The Woodlands this week through the nonprofit organization Camp For All, which is based out of Burton, Texas.
The organization hosts a barrier-free camp on-site there for children and adults with illnesses or special needs, but launched a summer initiative named Camp For All 2U in which camp staff and volunteers provide a week-long day camp in hospitals for pediatric patients who aren not able to attend a sleep-away camp.
While this is the first time that Camp For All 2U has been occurred in The Woodlands, the camp has also been hosted at other locations in downtown Houston and Austin. Pat Sorrells is the president and CEO of the nonprofit and said the camp atmosphere offers many benefits for children.
“Our goal is emotional support. This gets the kids out of their rooms and engaged in mental and physical exercise,” Sorrells said. “They make friends, feel like they’re not alone and at the end of the day they make memories and feel like they went to camp.”
And it’s clear the goal is to make the week as much like camp as possible. The kids interact with horses from Montgomery County-based Inspiration Ranch, have indoor archery sessions and get to pretend they are canoeing in water as volunteers push the kids around in the boats.
This camp is a way to ensure that the kids can still feel like kids, no matter what diagnosis they have. For kids going through cancer treatment or those who’ve had an operation and are in a wheelchair, leaving the hospital may not be an option. In some scenarios, even kids who are treated through outpatient care are unable to spend a week away without high-level medical care.
Cynda Parrish, Texas Children’s manager of patient and family services, said the hospital tries to target these types of patients. The entire camp takes place inside the hospital, so if a child has a treatment to go to, they’re free to leave a camp activity and come right back when they’re done.
“This is an amazing opportunity we can have here at the hospital that’s safe and can provide some of those camp experiences, those new experiences that parents can also feel secure about,” Parrish said.
With highly trained camp staff and volunteers who understand the medical complexities of the children, the camp can also be a way for parents to have a break for a few hours. Siblings often get to join in, too.
“It can be stressful for a family when physically, you can send one child to camp but not the other. Siblings tend to miss out on these opportunities, but here we can have sibling groups come together,” Parrish said.
Through the camp’s funding model, it’s also completely free to families. The hospital pays for half of the camp fees while the camp funds for the other half.
The program supervisor for this iteration of the organization is Lindsay Gallmore. In between registering more children to attend camp and making sure everything was running smoothly, Gallmore said she sees transformation in the patients-turned-campers.
“We see kids come in here not very happy to be at the hospital. They leave camp wanting to come back—even when they get discharged, the kids ask if they can return to camp,” Gallmore said. “It impacts them.”
jane.stueckemann@chron.com
Source: Nonprofit brings camp to patients at Texas Children’s The Woodlands this week – Chron
