Groundwork Magazine

A look into the life of inclusion counsellors, Emma D'Souza

Every summer, parents have to decide what to do with their children. With the school year officially over, alternatives to school are introduced to keep children safe, learning, and having fun. That is why the City of Markham offers a wide variety of summer camps all across the city. There are plenty of sport camps that focus on basketball, or soccer or badminton (just to name a few) or camps that incorporate all those sports within a week, or a camp for those who have a flair in dance and drama. There are even drop-in camps located at specific public schools that mimic school hours so that children (and parents) never have to get out of that “school schedule.”

 

Not only do these summer camps provide a safe and fun environment for children ages 5 to 15, it also creates opportunities for many older students (grade 7 and up) to volunteer and potentially become a camp counsellor themselves.

 

For some children with disabilities, a camp counsellor isn’t enough. A camp counsellor is responsible for ten children with a ratio of one counsellor to ten campers. In specific cases, an inclusion counsellor is introduced and he or she is responsible for working one-on-one with that specific camper.

Amanda Pulenzas, the inclusion camp supervisor for the City of Markham, explains the process of hiring an inclusion counsellor.

 

“Inclusion counsellors are very different from regular camp counselors. Each inclusion counselor is paired up with one camper and is responsible for them throughout the entire day,” Pulenzas explains. “The camper’s needs can vary as it can be physically and emotionally draining constantly chasing after your camper or having to lift them multiples times a day to change. It takes a very special and dedicated individual to be an inclusion counselor and we look for counselors who are hardworking and express an interest in children with special needs.”

 

Emma D’Souza is a 17 year old student at the St. Augustine Catholic High School. She worked as an inclusion counsellor this past summer (of 2014) for the City of Markham at numerous summer camps all over the city. She has plans of going into architecture or design after she graduates in 2015 and hopes to design products “that are more user-friendly for the differently abled.”

 

Even at school, D’Souza is a part of the Best Buddies program which promotes having lunch with students and members of the FSL program. She says this program has “helped her become more informed about disabilities and how certain disabilities affect people, especially at a young age.”

She began looking for a summer job like many other high school students when she was 16-years-old.

 

“When I applied for a city of Markham job I was just turning 16,” D’Souza remembers, “and overwhelmed to have so many kids in my care, so I thought a 1:1 counsellor to camper ratio would better suit me.”

Soon after, she sent in her resume letter accompanied with a cover letter and was soon invited for an interview. Within a month, she was preparing herself for counsellor training.

 

D’Souza remembers that her training was at least twice the amount of hours as a camp counsellor’s training. In addition to the City wide training that all counsellors attend, inclusion counsellors must also be present for training sessions that were located at Vaughan Mills.

 

“The sessions involved learning how to feed others without being demeaning, how to deal with toileting and changing needs, as well as how to adapt games.” D’Souza explained. “Another session of training involved the different disabilities we would be adapting for. They involved; mainly autism, Down syndrome, ADHD, ADD, Asperger’s, as well as multiple physical disabilities.”

 

Throughout the course of the summer, D’Souza had to deal with a wide range of cognitive and physical disabilities in her campers. She remembers having to work with campers who were deaf, blind, diabetic, with social anxiety, or were aggressive or violent. In the case of the camper who was diabetic, “she was too young to remember to administer insulin” D’Souza recalls. For that week, her main job was to focus on the camper’s medication so she did not have to concern herself with involving the camper in camp activities as the camper was actively participating in the camp games herself.

 

But some weeks are a little tougher. Children with a physical disability or who have social anxiety tend to stray away from “camp wide activities.” Camp wide activities are games that involve everyone in that particular camp. The campers are no longer with their group (of 10) and their respective counsellors, instead, they are with the other 4 or 5 groups within the camp and they partake in a giant game. It may sometimes be dodge ball, or it may be soccer-baseball, but nonetheless incorporating a child with a physical disability into a camp wide sport is no easy task.

 

“I had a camper who was blind so I had to be his guide,” D’Souza recollects, “He had to put his hand on my upper arm and sometimes he would pinch me. He would just be bored but he would want to pinch me. So I would have to tell him ‘No pinching.’”

 

“With games, I was kind of the narrator, I had to say things like ‘One kid is running around, he gets tagged by another kid’ but he was a really good sport.” D’Souza said. “He doesn’t really like the camp games but he actually puts an effort towards it. And he really loved to go around and feel the room and see what kind of setting he was in.”

 

Micael Thompson, a camp counsellor with the Dance and Drama camp agrees on the importance of inclusion counsellors.

 

“[They] were incredibly helpful to the camp as it is difficult enough to split your attention between so many kids as it is, and even harder when certain campers require more attention and all of my focus.” Thompson states. “So, having an inclusion counsellor is really handy in helping defuse a tough situation, getting campers involved in games and also making camp run smoothly and safely.”

 

Although some weeks can be all fun and games, there have been several accounts of campers being overly aggressive with their inclusion counsellors.

 

“We had some campers who were biting counsellors. One of them tried to bite me, if it breaks skin you have to go to urgent care, because of the saliva entering your skin.” D’Souza stated. “We had a few counsellors who were bitten, and it broke skin so they had to go to urgent care which sucks because the camper has to go home early or get accompanied to urgent care with the camp counsellor and the camp supervisor.”

[Insert quotations from Camp supervisor]

 

D’Souza says that most campers who get violent or angry just simply want to go home. The camper gets accustomed to biting followed by going home, thus every time they want to go home, they resort to biting.

 

“One of our campers would only stay for a short period of time. He would only be at camp for a few hours,” D’Souza remembers, “His parents would literally stay around the community centre and wait for them to call and pick him up because he gets violent really easily.”

 

“And I think that sometimes when he was trying to bite, it was just to say ‘I want to go home, I don’t want to be here’, and it doesn’t take 2 seconds for the parents to get here, it takes some time, so that’s when he would get frustrated and start to bite.”

 

Although being an inclusion counsellor was a tough and taxing job on both D’Souza’s mind and body, she’s definitely enjoyed the experience and learned a great deal from it.

 

“I've gathered a lot of stories from this job, most of them you have to laugh rather than.” D’Souza recalls with a smile. “One was when a camper and I were canoeing, she got overexcited and we ended up falling into the river at [camp] Chimo. We had to swim all the back to the dock but she wouldn't stop talking about it and smiling, then she hugged me and said we should do it again tomorrow.”

 

For parents who are interested in these summer camps, you can visit www.markham.ca. and for those parents who would like an inclusion counsellor for their child they must indicate that their child requires 1:1 support during the enrolment of camp. It is also recommended that the parents meet up with the director of inclusion to figure out strategies and adaptation techniques to get their child involved. Parents are generally deterred from getting an inclusion counsellor as prices double when an inclusion counsellor is required but D’Souza wants to remind parents that funds and grants are available for most parents whose children have disabilities.