Camp a great place for boy with autism
Geneva Centre, supported by Fresh Air Fund, focuses on children with high needs
Janine Denney-Lightfoot’s son Jake started attending camp at the Geneva Centre for Autism in 2008.
Nine years later, and now a highneeds 13-year-old, he still goes to the camps and programs the centre runs every year.
“It’s pretty much his favourite thing,” Denney-Lightfoot says. “It’s the best place I’ve found for him and nothing else has actually come close in terms of programs.”
Denney-Lightfoot says the camps he goes to have had a huge impact on Jake’s development as he’s grown up. Over the years, she’s tried to enrol him in programs at other organizations, but found that they often couldn’t handle her son. At the Geneva Centre, she says she never has to worry about whether Jake will be well taken care of.
“I don’t have to worry about his safety, I don’t have to worry that I’ll get a call saying, ‘we can’t manage your son today, you’re going to have to come and pick him up,’ ” DenneyLightfoot says.
The Geneva Centre began its summer camp program in 1974 and has offered support for children with autism spectrum disorder and their parents since then. It’s one of the 50 residential camps and 52 day camps supported by the Toronto Star’s Fresh Air Fund, which gives underprivileged kids and kids with special needs the ability to go to camp.
“We offer a bit of a unique service because we serve high needs and have a large one-to-one service ratio in the summer,” says Katie Nicholson, a supervisor at the centre.
Nicholson says staff support is assigned to children based on their needs. In Jake’s case, he had a staff member who took care of him one on one, but in the case of other children, sometimes a staff member is responsible for three campers, or two staff members are assigned to one child.
Currently, the Geneva Centre has about 50 children attending their camps each week in the summer, and helps about 3,000 individuals and families around Toronto.
Though Jake typically spends two weeks in July and August at the camp, he once spent the entire month of August there, in 2015. That month was a time when many changes were happening in Jake’s life, Denney-Lightfoot says, and the centre took care of the costs.
Though Denney-Lightfoot didn’t know it at the time, the funding had come from the Fresh Air Fund.
Nancy Bent, spokesperson for the Geneva Centre, says the Fresh Air funding is given out to families de- Goal: $650,000 To date: $442,898 How to donate: With your gift, the Fresh Air Fund can help send 25,000 disadvantaged and special needs children to camp. The experience gives these children much more than relief from summer heat: it gives them a break in life and memories to last a lifetime. Our target is $650,000. > By cheque: Mail to the Toronto Star Fresh Air Fund, One Yonge St., Toronto, ON M5E 1E6 > By credit card: Visa, MasterCard, AMEX or Discover, call 416-869-4847 > Online: For instant donations, use our secure form at: thestar.com/freshairfund The Star does not authorize anyone to solicit on its behalf. Tax receipts will be issued in September.