Newsweek

Therapy at the Campfire
Troubled kids get Help

In the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern California, teenagers who have been in trouble with the law go backpacking with their probation officers. At Camp Homeward Bound in upstate New York, homeless youngsters take a rare break from the institutional shelters and welfare hotels that are their homes in New York City. At Wediko in New Hampshire, psychologists and social workers provide intensive therapy for youngsters who have been sexually or physically abused and have serious emotional problems. For these kids and thousands of others across the country, camp is more than a summer of sports and campfires; it's a chance to get help.

Educators and psychologists say camp is valuable for all children simply because it's fun. But it is also an effective place to reach children with special problems because their guards are down. "I can get done in seven weeks in this camp what it takes me a year to do" in regular therapy, says Bob Ditter, a psychologist who runs The Day Club, a camp for emotionally disturbed children in Newton, Mass. At camp, kids are far from the environment where they got into trouble in the first place. Acquiring new skills like swimming or sailing bolsters their self-esteem. And communal living means everyone has to pitch in. "It's one of the most intense and intimate of experiences," says David Hilliard, executive director of Missouri's Kiwanis Camp Wyman, which has programs for inner-city kids. At camp, he says, there is "an eliminating of many of our daily routines. That allows us to focus on what we came for."

"Sheriff's boys"; Youngsters come to specialized camps for many different reasons. Last month seven 13- to 15-year-ollds spent a rugged week at the Wilderness Canoe Base near Grand Marais, Minn. They were call the "Sheriff's Boys" because they had been referred to the camp from juvenile court as part of a treatment program for charges ranging from truancy to assault. The boys spent much for the trip fighting, staging sit-down strikes and dreaming of hot showers. One boy said he hated the required four-hour solo stint; "It was boring. You couldn't talk to anybody." But he concede that he had learned something: "You need friends." For kids like the Sheriff's Boys, that's an important lesson, counselors say. "By the end of the trip, they were functioning as a group," explains Wilderness camp guide Bill Reinhart. "These kids aren't used to being part of anything."

At some camps, the sense of community grows directly out of the nature of the problems the chidlren share. Almost 150 kids will spend a week this August at Camp naCOAra in upstate New York; all of the campers and many of the counselors are children of alcoholics. Kids from east Oakland, California learn about survival in the ghetto at a day camp call Crimebusters. Counselors talk about the drugs and violence that the kids see in the housing projects where they live. "They learn not only how to tie a square know," says director Rachelle Brown-Miller, "but also how to get away from a bullet. They learn to use common sense so they don't get hurt."

Forging friendships: Other camps try to forge unlikely friendships between people who don't normally get together. Senior citizens and teenagers from the ghettos of Chicago attend a joint session at Camp Algonquin n Illinois. In the city the two groups are often "natural enemies," says director Jane Pirsig. At camp they learn to trust each other. "The seniors will often say how surprised they are that there are such nice young people around," says Pirsig. Algonquin also runs a program for troubled families. Mothers "who have problems trusting the social worker in a three-piece suit" are more likely to listen when the counselor is wearing jeans, Pirsig says.

Problem solving is not something that only specialized camps have to worry about. In recent years camp counselors across the country have learned to talk with their charges about divorce, drug addiction and child abuse. "Camps have always looked upon themselves as educational institutions, and now we're realizing even more the important role we have," says Bob Telleen, director of YMCA Camp Manito-wish in Wisconsin. "Our main goal is to have these campers achieve goals in their own lives." At the end of summer, campers will go home with memories of sleeping under the stars and the skills to build better lives.