Meow Meow Foundation was successful in getting LA County to pass drowning prevention and camp safety Motions in June. These Motions will pave the way to critical legislation that will keep millions of children healthy and safe in California. They will also foster federal legislative efforts in the near term.

However, the county health department is dragging its feet and failing to be as transparent as promised. We urge you to contact them and express your support of the following recommendations.

Email Liza Frias, Director of Environmental Health Services

Email Barbara Ferrer, Director of Public Health (and Liza Frias’ boss)

Email Community Health to join meetings on either 10/26 or 10/27

PREFACE

The Motion to regulate county camps specifically stipulates: “The County can help meet the Meow Meow Foundation’s goal of “eliminating preventable childhood drowning and camp-related injuries, deaths and abuse.” 

At the beginning of her recent presentation, Liza Frias [LF] said, “Los Angeles County is taking a proactive step.” Tragically, it was our daughter’s wholly preventable death at the hands of an admittedly grossly negligent and fraudulent unincorporated area camp coupled with our subsequent 2-year advocacy fight that comprise the reasons why these Motions exist. Summerkids was not uninspected or in any way regulated by county DPH. The camp put as many as eight children in the hospital before they killed Roxie. And if that weren’t enough of a red flag, residents waged multiple community complaints and the county knew about the camp’s problematic Conditional Use Permit.

Respectfully, the county had not been “proactive” about this issue. Nonetheless, we appreciate current attention being afforded to this critical matter that affects so many constituents.

Meow Meow Foundation is the only camp safety foundation in California, let alone the entire nation. This reality should be shocking to every parent, every caregiver, every community and every governing body or party. Equally shocking is the fact that the federal government has not passed one camp safety law, despite numerous attempts made over 40 years.

Why is that? The camp industry is a $26 billion clique with more than 1 million employees serving upwards of 25 million children throughout every state in the nation.

The American Camp Association [ACA] continues to pursue relentless and dangerous influence-peddling with huge donations to politicians and a successful 2020 campaign that convinced Mike Pence and the CDC to greenlight camps during COVID-19, after which massive outbreaks occurred at camps nationwide. Such outbreaks were even far worse this past summer. Following extensive research on and personal experiences with the ACA, we are convinced that it is a dangerous lobby organization and illicit proxy for far too many Americans.

California lobby organizations such as the County Health Executives Association of California, the California State Association of Counties and Urban Counties of California continue to lobby against improved camp health and safety measures because they have been explicit in their disdain for having to execute “additional work” for which their constituents claim to not have enough resources.

We heard the same excuse from our own EHS and health department leaders in Pasadena. They decided it was not worth the time or effort to inspect or oversee camps, because they said they did not have to and they didn’t have the time or the money.

We demand far better for Los Angeles County. We did not sue the County because we thought it would be more admirable, more dignified to honor our remarkable child –  and all children – by advocating for long overdue and forward-thinking protections, despite the fact that LAC cited nine violations upon their inspection of the pool after Roxie died. We will never accept any excuse that the county does not have or cannot allocate proper resources to care for kids in risk-intensive child care environments.

A multimillion dollar lawsuit would have been far more damaging in far more ways to the county, whereas it is irrefutably more prudent to invest a fraction of such money and resources into measures that symbolize how both county camps and county officials are willing to be accountable to its most vulnerable constituents.

California’s camp standards are meager at best. We have had myriad discussions with state health department officials who have made it perfectly clear that they not only abdicate enforcement of minimum camp standards to counties, but they also expect counties to greatly enhance such minimums in order to afford maximum protections – this includes day and overnight/resident camp operations.

LF said, “We’re hoping that we’ll be able to convene a [work] group sometime in November and December and then be able to present it to the BOS with an anticipated effective date of either February or March but before the next season.”

Camp signups begin late this year and through March. By that time, many parents and caregivers will already have either entirely paid for or provided deposits to camps that have not yet met any of the newly adopted requirements, whatever they may be.

Why this process will take another five months and 10 months in total is confounding. We introduced a complex 40-page state bill working hand-in-hand with legislative counsel and we did so within only a few months. The state legislative counsel had extraordinarily demanding schedules having to draft a plethora of bills. 

Continuing and lengthy delays will cause a great amount of confusion if not derision should camps not comply. Also, this timeline gives no margin of error to effectuate such ordinances for the 2022 camp season. In fact, LF’s suggest schedule may already be far too late for 2022.

Please also tell us what other state camp laws LF referred to when making her decisions. And, clarify the camps over which EHS has jurisdiction and their locations. Please advise how EHS and DPH will aggressively campaign to convince incorporated areas to adopt these new standards.

Finally, how do any camps know requirements unless they somehow find their way to the EHS or DPH websites? And how does DPH know how many camps there are when they don’t register them? Remember, DPH asked Meow Meow Foundation for its camps data.

REVIEW OF LIZA FRIAS SECOND PRESENTATION

LF said, “Because of the size of the meeting we aren’t able to have this as an interactive meeting.” How were non-camp stakeholders, including parents/caregivers to know about either of LF’s presentations unless they signed up for LAC newsletters like we did or unless they were notified by DHP directly or unless they magically stumbled upon the information on a hidden page of the LAC website? And, why aren’t these meetings, which are really just LF’s presentations, recorded and the attendees required to identify who they are so we know the stakeholder makeup?

In the spirit of transparency and the Brown Act, we demand to know who DPH proactively invited. Please provide such information by 10/29.

LF said that the BOS’s required DPH to look “particularly at day camps.” This is not true. The Motion stipulates: “There is an opportunity for the County to demonstrate leadership in setting forth reasonable minimum health and safety requirements that apply to ALL camps within its jurisdiction.”

The Motion also demands that “camps are regularly inspected.” This does not eliminate any particular camps from such inspections and should thereby include all camps without exception.

LF said county DPH is “responsible for enforcing state regulations” related to “organized camps.” LF and DPH have done no such thing. After our repeated attempts to demand proof of inspections, proof of all organized camp registrations, proof of permit fees, proof of any complaints or health and safety issues, LF and DPH have refused to comply. We have no other choice but to file PRA requests.

LF said, “We currently do post our inspection reports on our website.” This is not true or misleading at the very least. LF’s explanation was that, “We are converting our paper records to digital records, but we will get to it.” When we demanded that county EHS inspect camps during COVID-19 and ultimately had to raise the issue with Barbara Ferrer, once EHS inspected a handful of those camps, they found that 16 of 17 violated COVID-19 mandates.

According to the EHS inspections lists, of the roughly 50 camps with pools, only half of those pools were actually inspected this past year. With the exception of two camps for kids with disabilities and one other camp, the rest of the camps whose pools were not inspected were faith-based camps. Why didn’t LF and county EHS inspect those pools?

LF said, “Right now, we have approximately 25 children’s camps, 14 of those children camps are within the unincorporated areas of the county.” This is misleading. How does the county know the number of its overnight camps if the county has not enforced business licenses or any type of reporting?

Bear in mind, Los Angeles County includes 2.2 million children. Of that population, roughly 1.4 million are of camp age. And, based on national data, 50% of those children will attend camp during a given year. Therefore, at least 700,000 children will attend camps in the county. Do not  forget, children from other counties will also attend LAC camps.

It would be rather irrational to believe anything other than the fact that a healthy portion of these children attend county overnight/resident camps. More importantly, it would have been best if the county did its own detailed survey to assess the market rather than asking us to provide data to them.

Current definition for county camps:

"Children's camp" means any place maintained for recreational or other purposes where 10 or more children under the age of 21 are kept for five days or more while away from their usual place of residence. This chapter shall not apply to any private-boarding school as defined in this chapter or any place of detention maintained by a government agency.

"Children's day camp" means a Children's camp as defined in Section 8.04.080, which is attended by children for either five (5) consecutive days or five (5) days in a fourteen (14) day period without an overnight stay.”

Therefore, according to this extremely nonsensical or confusing language, all camps are effectively overnight camps, the rest are disregarded.

LF’s newly proposed definition for camps: “A children’s camp is any supervised, scheduled program or organized group activity operated outside of typical school hours attended by 5 or more children ages 3-18 years, without direct parental supervision, and operating for over 3 hours per day for at least 5 days per fiscal year; such programs may or may not be advertised as a camp.”

LF defined this as a “children’s camp,” yet later classified three different types of camps with three different types of criteria. This is utterly confusing and entirely unnecessary.

First, parents run day camps all the time. The camp that killed our child under DPH’s watch was run by parents whose children attended and now work at that camp. Therefore, this is a nonstarter.

Also, it does not matter how many hours this type of operation operates each session. And, fiscal years? Whose fiscal year? Again, not necessary.

For more context, understand that, the state’s definition of “organized camps” was crafted by camp operators-stakeholders to be: “a site with program and facilities established for the primary purposes of providing an outdoor group living experience with social, spiritual, educational, or recreational objectives, for five days or more during one or more seasons of the year.”

Not only is the definition grammatically limp, i.e. “program” instead of “programming,” it is purposefully opaque to the point where “outdoor group living experience” was somehow conflated with overnight residence. Simple language would have helped to avoid all subsequent challenges associated with the state’s current definition. Camp stakeholders apparently determined that the more obtuse the language the better the loopholes for the disaffected.

Our definition will instead land somewhere close to this:

“Children’s camps offer daytime or overnight experiences administered by professional adults who provide social, cultural, educational, recreational or artistic programming to more than five children ages 3-17 for five days or longer during at least one season.”

LF’s explanation of “camp classifications” is confusing because she refers to the classifications as “children’s camps,” when in fact county code references “children’s day camps” in Title 8, Division 1, Part 1, 8.04.081, and “children’s camps” are classified separately under 8.04.080. 

Although LF abandoned her tiers nomenclature, the new iteration is all-too similar and entirely unnecessary. There is no difference between an overnight/resident camp – or what the county calls a “children’s camp” – and a day camp, or what the county calls a “children’s day camp.” Other than residing away from home, kids in day camps also often nap, they bathe, they eat, and the only hours they are away from parents are evening hours. Everything that can happen at an overnight/resident camp can and does happen at a day camp.

LF said, “Separate from all of those [newly proposed DPH camp classifications], you still have organized camps defined in state law that will continue to be defined in state law separate from what’s in county code.” That means she continues to use the ACA as a proxy for actual meaningful oversight instead of superseding the ACA’s colossally toothless standards as we have repeatedly described for you.

And if that weren’t confusing enough, state law very well may change next year as we introduce new requirements and definitions through a new bill which would also remove the ACA from the statute.

LF defined “passive activities” as “when campers are spectators, or use limited mobility to participate, examples include viewing a movie, playing board games or art classes.” Campers can still get sick, sexually assaulted, bullied injured or otherwise harmed under any of these conditions. Abandon the use of “passive activities.”

LF defined “specialized activities” as those “which may expose a camper to a risk of serious injury because of the potential danger of the activity.” This should be disregarded altogether. Instead, classify activities by risk level: no/low (green), medium (amber), high (red). Then classify camp programming accordingly, i.e. crafts are no/low, hikes are medium, aquatics or riflery are high. In other words, instead of different camp classifications or definitions, apply different requirements to camps depending upon their programming.

LF said all “children’s camps” – not day camps – must have a director in charge when campers are present, but she does not define what the county requires of a director.

For instance, “proposed staffing requirements” for directors and owner-operators should, at the very least, include at least two seasons or years of camp management or child care experience, no criminal records and a minimum age of 25.

LF said background checks only apply to persons 18 and older. This is a serious mistake. Of the thousands of sexual abuse cases that have occurred at camps over the last decade, staffers under 18 commit an abundance of abuse.

Any counselor – whether a counselor-in-training, a junior counselor or a volunteer – must undergo a background check. Also, LF does not demand that these background checks be required annually. Annual background checks are imperative, because staffers can commit offenses at any time. Don’t forget, many camps use foreign labor via J-1 visa programs and those folks must be heavily referenced or treated with separate requirements.

Regarding first aid training requirements, LF said staffers 16 and older should be  “trained in the principles of First Aid and CPR.” This is vague. We should require every camp staffer to receive CPR and First Aid training certifications from an appropriate agency.

And regarding “Health Supervisors,” camps are child care operations, period. Whether they serve five kids engaged in arts and crafts or 500 kids engaged in high-risk activities, the person(s) charged with care must be able to mitigate health challenges in some manner, especially since they are being paid for that care. Perhaps such services can be scaled depending upon the number of campers. At the bare minimum, camps must meet the state’s requirement per Division 2 (commencing with Section 500) of the Business and Professions Code or training required pursuant to Section 1596.866 of the Health and Safety Code. Camps can also supplement supervision with Tele-Health subscriptions.

We paid more than $3,000 to send our daughter to a camp that killed our child and apparently put at least eight other children in the hospital since 2016. We were attracted to this camp because it stipulated that one of the owner-operators was an emergency medicine physician who rearranged his schedule to be at camp for the summer. We later discovered he was never there that summer. 

The county still allows that camp to operate without any knowledge of how they currently provide health services. Is 16 hours of lifesaving training too much to ask for. We truly hope not.

Every “children’s camp” as currently defined in county code Title 11, Division 1. 11.08.060 must have an infirmary. We expect that, since the definition of camps will now change, all camps will be subject to this same requirement as currently defined.

LF glossed over “Mandatory Reporter Status.” This is a particularly crucial component of health and safety, largely because abuse is widespread at children’s camps nationwide. Every camp staffer of adult age who is charged with child care duties must be a mandated reporter who possesses appropriate training. The penal code currently identifies “administrator of a public or private day camp’ as MRs.

Why does LF believe that day camps have the right to self-certify? Not one child care provider should ever have the right to self-certify, which effectively exempts them from inspections and proper oversight. This is wholly nonsensical and an absolute nonstarter. As previously stated, however, LF’s 3-level classifications must be abandoned in favor of a clean, clear, singular camp definition.

LF’s “Proposed Requirements: Written Operating Procedures” require the following:

First, go to this page, click the Business Information and Documents tab and download the documents. Tell us that the Intent to Operate form is sufficient for child care businesses which might serve up to 1,000 children or more each summer? It is shocking at best at how little it takes to operate a camp child care facility.

These documents must be amended in a wholesale fashion. They should be used as information gathering tools to better understand the variety of camp markets, the makeup of camps, the approximate amount of revenue camp operators generate and more.

Also, the problem is that LF does not define EHS’s own qualifications pertaining to effective operating procedures. If one camp operator has one season as a camp counselor does that qualify her/him as “Supervisor?” What does EHS consider to be adequate training? What does EHS consider to be proper skill verification criteria and process? What does EHS consider to be proper participant eligibility requirements? What does EHS consider to be proper health plans? What does EHS consider to be proper equipment needed for medium or high-risk activities or other programming? 

Most importantly, EHS does not even mention Emergency Action Plans! EAP’s are critical for camp operations. EAPs include processes for managing injuries, sexual abuse, a virus outbreak, an active shooter, an earthquake, a fire, bullying, mental health challenges, crimes, staff abuse issues, animal intrusions, proximity to emergency services and more.

The issue is not whether these camp operations provide some mocked up operational plan, it’s whether they walk the walk. And, it’s whether EHS can determine how to inspect ore enforce these measures.

LF said, “We would be looking to see how parents are able to go in and easily identify whether a camp has been permitted or not. For those inspection reports that have been completed, they would also be available so the public can view inspection reports.”

Instead, require all inspection reports to be available before camp season begins and available within two days of inspections conducted during camp season. And, we demand that inspections always be conducted within the first 25% of the camp’s operating term, otherwise their purpose is all but moot.

Regarding enforcement, LF said, “education can be provided to operators.” What type of education and who would provide that education? Is she talking about health and safety education? Emergency action planning education? Certification education?

Also, violations must be publicly available via a website page. The camp must visibly post its outstanding violations enabling patrons to assess their options. Incidentally, the Department of Social Services requires childcare providers to notify parents of all violations.

Any camp child care operators who complain about having to spend money to be trained/certified in First Aid and CPR or complain about having to hire a health professional or complain about permit fees should not be in the business of child care to begin with.

One participant during LF’s presentation wrote that (s)he would have to spend $100K for a health professional – absolutely wrong and absurdly hyperbolic. Another said investing in healthcare protections would put the operation out of business – again, absurd. Another said that the operation would not need to worry about such things because “health care providers are close by.” It’s hard to even begin to justify a response to that.

Ultimately, to suggest that such requirements are inordinately cumbersome if not professionally lethal is to suggest that profits are far more critical than protecting our most precious cargo. Shame on these camp folks who wage the same old, tired arguments to pinch pennies at the expense of kids.

Last but not least, in no way, shape or form does LF’s current proposal mention anything about incentives or accommodations for camps that serve socioeconomically disadvantaged or mentally/physically disabled children, despite the fact that the Motion demands such considerations.