Summit Camp is in its 5th decade serving special needs boys and girls ages 8 to 23. Our campers need personal as well as interpersonal success, and Summit Camp provides it! Summit is a premiere program that meets the unique social and emotional needs of young people who have difficulty with sustaining friendships. Our campers enjoy an atmosphere completely designated to their success: fun, friendship, and independent growth.
Summit Camp provides year round programs including Summer Camp, Teen Travel and our newest program, The Center at Summit.
The Center at Summit is geared specifically towards our participants 18 through 22 years of age whom are working on independent living skills. The program program is a full time, 7 week residential program located at our campus in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. Summit also offers a “Mini Center” experience at the end of the camp season, for 2 weeks in late August. Participants in this program are working on skills important to the transition to early adulthood.
Through out Teen Travel program, teens will have the opportunity to explore some exciting locations. They may visits places such as Costa Rica, Italy & Greece, or take an Alaskan or Caribbean cruise. Our travel program offers amazing adventures for young adults 15-23 years old struggling with social learning skills in a well supported and intricately designed atomosphere.
Our summer camp program focuses on Physical Education, Social & Personal Development, STEM, Art and Outdoor activities. This is a Sleepaway Summer Camp for youth that have social and emotional learning challenges any age from 8 years to 21 years. Sessions of any length from 1-9 weeks.
Because the need for social opportunities doesn’t end in August, our Weekenders and School Break Trips keep the Summit magic going all year long.
The child we serve has been the recipient of love and attention within his/her home. Even within the warmth of a family setting, however, the child may have difficulty in coping with the demands placed upon them, or with the quite natural tendency of the family to be overprotective, or with siblings who cannot understand the atypical behaviors or even the child’s seemingly ‘preferential treatment’ by the parent. This may lead to exhaustion and frustration on both sides, and parents who fear how the child will be successful in any new environment. The family is searching for a community where their child can be “who they are” without fear of rejection- or, in some cases, expulsion- by those who initially welcomed the child and offered them hope of making a connection and a positive experience outside the safety of their established settings. They wish they could magically share all their insider knowledge of how to best support and react to their child’s needs, such that other adults and perhaps even children could see the wonderful things their child has to offer.
For children and for parents, Summit is a place they come to know a child that has had such struggles can participate freely, with the knowledge that the staff and the Directorship are signing on for just such an experience. That the counselors working with the campers have come with an intent to support such needs, and that the program is developed to encourage our children to do their best while also having no qualms about supporting them when they are experiencing some of their worsts. That other children there will have similar levels of challenge- and awareness- that can mean real, meaningful friendships and interpersonal exchanges, often for the first time in the child’s life. This is why the parents think of us as the ‘Magic on the Hill’- and why the campers simply think of us as ‘Summit Camp’.
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