The Hope Connection: A Therapeutic Summer Day Camp for Adopted and At-Risk Children with Special Socio-Emotional Needs

Large numbers of North American and Western European families are adopting children with serious socio-emotional needs. Other children experience similar deficits as a result of neglect and abuse by carers. Often these children are diagnosed with psychopathology and receive drug treatments that can be ineffective and even detrimental. Karyn B Purvis, David R Cross, Ron Federici, Dana Johnson and L Brooks McKenzie report on The Hope Connection, a project designed to meet the needs of these at-risk children and their families. The core of this project is a theoretically integrated summer day camp offering activities that are attachment rich, sensory stimulating and behaviourally structured. Pre-test and post-test data indicate that summer camp had a significant impact on the children's behaviour (n = 19), as indicated by parent-report measures of child behaviour problems and attachment. These findings are discussed with regard to possible future directions of programme implementation and evaluation.