Not Just Play Summer Camp and the Profession of Social Work

Camps often provide children with a first taste of independence and freedom from the restrictions of home and school, while offering a milieu full of opportunities for psychosocial development, creative interaction, and mutual aid. Enduring friendships often grow in the close-knit cabin groups and age cohorts, and professionally guided camps offer a nearly unique setting for strengths-based development in a nurturing environment. Though summer camps have provided social workers and future social workers with educational, practice, research, and theory-development opportunities as they direct, staff, attend, and provide supervision in these surroundings, the field has received limited scholarly attention. Not Just Play, the only book written in many decades that focuses on the relationship between social work and the summer camp movement, provides a comprehensive treatment of this underappreciated area of practice. In addition to updating their knowledge in the area, social workers and camp professionals will benefit from the authors' consideration of the many advantages and connections explored in the volume, which includes case vignettes alongside core scholarly research. In addition to the more extended pieces, numerous quotations gathered from interviews and online questionnaires are incorporated into the text, many from well-known social workers citing the influence of their camp experiences. As a whole, the resource offers readers a multifaceted examination of social work and summer camp that broadens their professional and scholarly perspective.

Meryl Nadel, DSW, ACSW, LCSW, is Professor of Social Work at Iona College.

Susan Scher, MSSA, LCSW, is Professor Emeritus of Social Work at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

Preface
Introduction

Section One. Nature, Growth, and Group
Chapter 1. Natural Environment as Refuge, Nurturer, Catalyst
Chapter 2. Resilience and the Strengths Perspective in Action
Chapter 3. Community, Group, Group Work

Section Two. Social Work and Summer Camp in Historical Perspective
Chapter 4. The Beginnings of the Summer Camp Movement
Chapter 5. From Fresh Air to Summer Camp: Social Work Enters the Picture
Chapter 6. Growth and Development of Social Work Camps: 1920s-1940s
Chapter 7. Expansive Growth, Changing Times: 1950s-1970s
Chapter 8. The Therapeutic Camp: Trends in Camps for Children with Social-Emotional Challenges
Chapter 9. The Group Experience in Camping: Observations from Schwartz and Shulman
William Schwartz and Lawrence Shulman

Section Three. Camps and the Social Work Profession
Chapter 10. Roles for Social Workers
Chapter 11. Recruitment to the Profession
Chapter 12. Social Work Researchers Go to Camp
Dana R. Dillard, Stacey R. Kolomer, and Katharine Hanavan
Chapter 13. Group-Work Orientation in the Contemporary Summer Camp

Section Four. Social Work and Camps Today
Chapter 14. Camps for Many Populations
Chapter 15. Social Work Students at Camp: Field Placements and Service Learning at Summer Camp
Chapter 16. Opportunities and Issues