{"id":23584,"date":"2019-04-18T12:43:05","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T16:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23584"},"modified":"2019-04-18T12:43:14","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T16:43:14","slug":"new-camp-serves-autistic-and-special-needs-campers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/new-camp-serves-autistic-and-special-needs-campers\/","title":{"rendered":"New camp serves Autistic and Special Needs campers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shawn Kendal knows\nall too well the struggle parents face finding a place tailor-made to suit the\nneeds of their children if they are special needs or on the autism spectrum\ndisorder (ASD).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the father of a\n21-year-old daughter who is on the severe end of the ASD spectrum, it\u2019s a\nfrustration he and countless parents have faced, but now he\u2019s teaming up with\neducator Shawna Akerman to spread some good Karma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Karma Country Camp,\nwhich will be located at the Aurora Preparatory Academy on Industrial Parkway\nNorth, is gearing up for its inaugural summer this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its goal, according\nto Ms. Akerman, is to \u201caddress the increase of loneliness and mental health\nchallenges that are linked to teens who do not fit into our typical world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Ackerman is a\nspecial needs teacher with 15 years of service in the York Region District School\nBoard. She brings her professional expertise to the table, while Mr. Kendal\nbrings not only his personal experience with his daughter, but also his\nbusiness acumen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis really is a\npassion project for Shawna and myself,\u201d he says. \u201cI have gone through the\ntrials and tribulations of raising a child, struggling with different programs\nand what do you do after high school? That is one of the main reasons (we\nfounded this camp) because of our experience. Because we realise there is a\nbigger gap for teenagers, we decided to focus the camp on the 12-plus, that way\nwe can support teens and young adults. From a camp perspective, there are a lot\nof really good integrated camps; that\u2019s fine for six or eight-year-old autistic\nkids, but when you get into your teenage years and are 12 or 14, that doesn\u2019t\nwork out so well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his daughter\u2019s\ncase, there just weren\u2019t a lot of options out there for her, particularly as\nshe transitions out of high school \u2013 as is the case with most special needs\nstudents. While she goes to the Reena program, which is \u201cgreat,\u201d says Shawn, so\nmany of these programs are run indoors with little opportunity for participants\nto get outside. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying very much for it to be like a typical camp experience,\u201d says Shawn. \u201cWe will\nhave groups of cabins and the kids will be grouped based on levels of needs and\nskills, not so much age. It is 9 \u2013 4 and every morning we will have a big\nenergy rally at the beginning and then the different groups will go to\ndifferent activities. Some of the activities are indoor, some are outdoor. When\nthe weather is nice, we will be more focused on outdoors, but we\u2019re doing field\nsports, we\u2019re doing water and sensory play. We have a huge activity area. We\u2019re\nalso doing music and drama therapy. We just hired an amazing staff who is going\nto be doing drama as well as music. If we can do a bit of a play or\nperformance, we will. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe also have all\nour senior counsellors are specialists in the field and are working either in\nthe board or somewhere else, and one of our big focuses is on social\ndevelopment. That seems to be the big theme with a lot of our campers. The\nparents really want them to work on their social skills, social etiquette,\nsocial appropriateness. We\u2019re going to weave that into the programming, like\nplaying sports, taking turns waiting, team building \u2013 all the things kids will\nbe learning while having fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIndoors, we\u2019ll have\na quiet Snoezelen space, puzzles, robotics, and arts and crafts. On a typical\nday, each group would go from one activity to the next, but we also know that\nsome kids\u2019 attention is either shorter or longer than others, so we\u2019ll allow\nfor flexibility. If a child needs a quiet room because he is done with soccer,\nhe\u2019ll have that opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the\nchallenges with integrated camps, he adds, is the camps work so hard at\nintegration but kids often still feel isolation. They struggle to feel a part\nof their group or a part of their cabin; when they play soccer and baseball,\nsometimes they can\u2019t keep up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is\nwe\u2019re very much focused on the individual camper,\u201d he says. \u201cWe go to\neveryone\u2019s house when they enrol, we spend about an hour to get to know the\nkids, get to know the family, understand what are some of the things those\nparents and families want us to work on. Again, it is knowing that camper\u2019s\nspecific needs and really catering around it. We\u2019re also going into the\ncommunity, located almost right at Yonge and Wellington, so we\u2019ll take the kids\ninto the community to practice shopping, buying things and ordering in\nrestaurants. We\u2019re going to set up a mock store at camp in one of our\nclassrooms so kids can really gain some life skills \u2013 just being able to go to\nTim Hortons and pay with a debit is big.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahead of their\ninaugural season, Mr. Kendal says, at this point, one of the key measures of\nKarma\u2019s success will be if kids go home happy and tired at the end of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of these\nkids, if they weren\u2019t at camp, will be spending a lot of the summer in their\nbasement playing video games alone,\u201d he says. \u201cFor us, we\u2019re trying to build a\ncommunity, give these kids friends, and build this social circle. For us, camp\nis really the beginning. We would love to evolve into a full-time activity\ncentre or drop in centre where campers can come, especially when they are finished\nhigh school, and even ones who aren\u2019t can come in and hang at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about trying\nto create that social community because loneliness and depression is a big\nproblem with this community because these kids don\u2019t have a lot of friends.\nThey are high functioning, verbal, but they are socially awkward and it is hard\nfor them. If we can create this community where kids are going home and they\nhave been able to make some friends, they sleep well, to me that is success.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For\nmore on Karma, visit karmacountrycamp.com.<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shawn Kendal knows all too well the struggle parents face finding a place tailor-made to suit the needs of their children if they are special needs or on the autism spectrum disorder (ASD).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-68o","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 13:53:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}