COUNTYWIDE : Group Helps Foster Youths Go to Camp

Volunteers will send 100 of the county’s 500 foster children to summer camp this year by holding fund-raisers and soliciting donations.

The Children’s Services Auxiliary, a volunteer branch of the county’s Department of Protective Services, has sent children from ages 6 to 17 to camps throughout Southern California for six years. The group of about 20 volunteers must raise about $60 per child, Joan Roberts, president of the auxiliary, said.

“We would like to send every child who wants to go,” Roberts said. “Not all kids want to go because it’s scary for them to leave their foster parents.”

Many foster children enjoy camp because they can play with other children as equals, Roberts said.

“It works really well because no one has a parent there,” she said.

Betty Howard, a Ventura mother of six who has taken foster children into her home for 14 years, sends the children to camp to let them learn more about their peers. “I had a boy about five years ago. I put him on the bus looking like ‘Oooh, I don’t want to leave.’ He came back singing camp songs,” Howard said. “The week that they’re at camp they do a lot of bonding with people.”

For more information or to make a donation to the program, call 654-3447.