Camp Interaction
BUTLER TWP — Even as hot as it is outside, children play dodgeball, work on crafts and learn about the environment as part of the Butler County Family YMCA's Summer Day Camp in Alameda Park.
Only this year's camp is a little different, but nothing the average passerby would notice.
This year, the YMCA has partnered with Wesley Spectrum Services of Pittsburgh to include children with autism spectrum disorder. This is a new inclusion pilot program for Butler County.
Carrie Dunkowski, the YMCA's director of school aged children, said the idea came from her master's degree research at Slippery Rock University.
The goal of the Y camp is to improve autistic children's interpersonal skills.
"Most interactive programs in the region take children with autism and put them in a camp or group together," she said Tuesday.
"But if the goal is to help autistic children learn to interact in society and succeed in a social way later in life, they need to learn to interact with other children," Dunkowski said.
The summer camp staff, hired by the YMCA, have degrees in childhood education and similar areas.As part of this new program, Wesley and the YMCA have hired one staff member to serve as camp behaviorist, who supports the children with autism, but in a way that the children don't know they are being treated as such.Marisa Taylor is serving as this year's camp behaviorist and said she keeps an eye on four diagnosed autistic children throughout the day, giving encouragement or helping to diffuse potential problems."Like if I see one of these children talking to someone at lunch or during arts and crafts, I'll tell them that was a good question or nice thing to say without making it seem like they are being singled out," Taylor said.Campers participate in arts and crafts, group games, team building and environmental activities, daily swimming and weekly field trips.Alicia Koger, who is in charge of Wesley's autism program, said there is a criteria to make sure this program is right for the child, looking at both age and level of function."We want to make sure children are developmentally able to benefit from this program," she said.Dunkowski said when working on her master's degree she found Butler County did not have programs for higher functioning autistic children, "so we are trying to address that gap in services.
"Here they have six hours of peer interaction, and what we have found is that a parent or adult may be willing to listen to long conversations about a particular topic that an autistic child is interested in; other children, however, won't," she said."If a autistic child is talking about dinosaurs this and dinosaurs that, another child will just say, 'I don't want to talk about that. Let's talk about this.'"That's a typical interaction they will get in school or other social settings and it teaches autistic children about how to get along with their peers in those settings," she added.This year's camp is five weeks long, but Dunkowski and Wesley hope to have two five-week sessions next summer."This summer, we have between 80 and 90 kids altogether," she said. "Next year, with two sessions we hope to have 150 to 200 kids during the summer."
