CAPITAL CAMPS & RETREAT CENTER
FOCUS FAMILY MARTIAL ARTS
Here’s what steps local camps in the DMV took in 2021, Training and Support
and will continue to take, to ensure mental health is Some problems, however, stem from more clinical
accounted for this summer.

issues. Trends of intensified anxiety, anorexia and
suicide ideation are affecting both schools and
camps, Goldscher says.

Focused Attention
To address it, camps have invested in additional
Goldscher noticed campers’ communication with
staff or training, as well as provided more
one another was different in 2021.

“When you spend (a year and a half behind connections to families’ home mental health
a screen) and all of a sudden you are in a high- providers virtually or over the phone.

Capital Camps had already been a leader in
intensity social situation with your peers, it takes
different skills and different muscle memory to camper care, with specialists in place for at least
two decades, but it intensified its program last
return,” she says.

Some camps saw children who were more
emotionally reactive or had attitudes that were
not as group-focused. It takes practice with peers
to develop these social-emotional competencies,
Rosenberg notes, which many haven’t been able to
do being away from camp.

Calleva helped campers adjust with more one-
on-one staff attention, says Julie Clendenin,
director of the outdoor-focused day camp with
multiple locations in the DMV.

Rachel Dolan is the owner of Focus Family, a
Jewish martial arts academy in Fairfax, Virginia,
which runs a day camp in the summer.

To get younger campers up to speed, Dolan says,
coaches needed to take 15 or 20 minutes with them
once or twice a week to talk about how to be a good
friend, kindness, respect and following directions.

Older campers only required a few times to smooth
over interpersonal conflicts and get them talking
to each other.

For Goldscher, last summer was about meeting
campers where they were and not expecting them
to be on track yet.

“We just really believe it’s about setting
expectations up front,” Clendenin adds. If camp
staff meet them where they are with compassion,
they adapt quickly.

Focus Family
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