An investigation into the psychosocial impact of therapeutic recreation summer camp for youth with serious illness and disability.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to evaluate the impact on emotional, social, physical and educational functioning of a therapeutic recreation camp provided by 'Over The Wall', a UK charity for children and young people with chronic illness or disability.

METHOD: Two hundred and sixty four people registered to attend camp were sent the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory version Child Self-Report Scale before camp, immediately after camp, 1 month after camp and 3 months after camp.

RESULTS: Of those invited to participate, 178 children completed the pre-camp survey (67% response rate). Of those, 105 completed both the post-camp 1 and pre-camp questionnaires (59% of pre-camp respondents), and 60 of those participants subsequently completed the 1-month post-camp questionnaire as well (34% of pre-camp respondents). Only 32 participants completed the 3-month follow-up data (18% of pre-camp respondents). Across the first three timepoints (pre-Camp, post-Camp and 1 month follow-up), a repeated measures ANOVA indicated a significant improvement in emotional and social functioning, but not physical or school functioning ( p < 0.05). Post-hoc analyses on pre-camp and post-camp scores revealed small-medium effect sizes of 0.317 and 0.272 for emotional and social functioning, respectively.

DISCUSSION: The therapeutic recreation summer camp provided for children and young people with health challenges had a significant, positive impact on emotional and social functioning. Such camps can therefore be considered as having empirical support for their aims. Further work is warranted to increase the response rate to establish the longer term impact of the camps and the wider impact of the camps on the wider family.