Season 2: Episode 9 - A New Model for a New Normal

In the 2023 camp season, Terri Mulks and her team at Camp Susan Curtis sent 43 campers home, a number that was about 400% above their baseline rate. And this appears to be a phenomenon that was mirrored in other camps all across the country. In our latest episode of Staffing, Safety, Society, we talk to Terri about what has changed since the pandemic. She also shares how she has used data to better illuminate both the nature and scope of the problem. And she points us toward some of the potential solutions that she and her team have implemented.

From tighter supervision ratios to raising the age at which children are considered eligible for camp, Terri is clear about her goal: To make sure that such high rates of exclusion do not become the norm moving forward, and to ensure that every camper gets a chance at the incredible experience they deserve.

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Transcript

00:02 - Terri Mulks (Guest)
What we saw this year, in addition to all those things we've seen in the past. Everything had amplified. 

00:12 - Kevin Trapani (Host)
Welcome y'all to season two, episode nine of Staffing Safety Society. I'm Kevin Trapani. And I'm Paige Bagwell Paige. Today the topic gets to the heart of why Staffing Safety Society as a podcast exists Now. The good news is we're going to talk a little bit about the pandemic today, but we're not here to talk about the pandemic before everybody bails out on us. 

00:35 - Paige Bagwell (Co-host)
Yes, please save everybody from hanging up now. 

00:38 - Kevin Trapani (Host)
The pandemic and our time kind of apart changed society, which means all of us, and specifically how it changed the children that we work with and some strategies that we want to employ. As a result of the ongoing impact of the pandemic, our staff traveled this summer to 150 plus camps around the country while they were in session and other summer programs as well, and we get that. Every camp, every organization, is different, but there was an absolute recurring theme, and the recurring theme was that it now takes more staff to supervise the same number of campers that it used to, and that's tough for folks to hear, especially coming right out into the new year, but it's really important for us to understand that. That's there, paige, I knew you got a perspective on that and we have an awesome guest today to talk about it. 

01:28 - Paige Bagwell (Co-host)
I mean, I think you're right. There was a theme across all types of organizations, specifically the youth serving, that you're going to need more staff, and I think that theme immediately creates anxiety. Creates anxiety for me just thinking about what that means, because let's be clear that hiring more staff has not been easy lately, I mean for a lot of industries. And the other side of that is how many kids you register for your programs, how many children you're going to have, and so do you have to reduce your number of children to meet the staff needs that you're able to have, and what that does to your revenue stream. There's just so many things that make it a really hard time to be running these organizations. But luckily, we have a fantastic person here today that's going to help us to think about this and kind of maybe remove some of that anxiety and really start to look at what we can actually do about it. And so I'm so excited to introduce Terri Mulks. 

02:18
Terri Mulks has been the director of Camp Susan Curtis, which is an organization that provides tuition, free summer camp experiences to main youth who are experiencing economic hardship since 2010. Incredible camp. We are just so happy to have her here. She's obviously an active member of American Camp Association. She serves on the New England Conference Committee and is a lead visitor. She's also on the Executive Committee on the main summer camps board and through all of these roles she's been tracking kind of carefully how the nature of supervision and, quite honestly, caring for campers more broadly, how that has all changed and she's got some really powerful insights and numbers, which we love. Kevin, we love numbers, data, we love the data. So welcome Terri, we're so happy to have you, thank you for having me. 

03:03 - Kevin Trapani (Host)
We're so grateful you're here and Terri, before we get too far. Thank you for doing the work you do. Yeah, it is incredibly important. 

03:10 - Terri Mulks (Guest)
It is a work of mission and of passion, and I love it very much, so it's great to be able to share it. 

03:16 - Paige Bagwell (Co-host)
So let's dive right in. So, as I mentioned, terri, in the introduction, we heard from a lot of organizations that something has changed specifically since the pandemic. 

03:24 - Terri Mulks (Guest)
Absolutely so. As you mentioned, we work with youth that are facing economic hardship. We're always seeing that there are more extreme mental, emotional and social health challenges with the population that we're serving and we've always been very upfront about talking about that and what that looks like for us and how we train our staff and how we run the program for the kids. What we saw this past year was that, in addition to all those things we've seen in the past, everything had amplified. We were working with kids and seeing situations and seeing challenges that we had not seen before. The majority of them were outside of our scope of service, which we are very clear about with our families, with our kids, with our referral partners. 

04:10
It was really heartbreaking, and it's been very hard to share, that we had to send home 43 campers this past summer Wow, and that's about 400% higher than what our baseline exclusion rate usually is, and it started happening within the first 24 hours of camp starting Wow, I really wanted to figure out what is going on. You know we started tracking some numbers. We left the summer being able to share with other camps what had happened, and it made us feel better to know that we weren't alone, seeing some of these more amplified behaviors, some of these bigger challenges, things operating outside of scope of service was not unique to our camp. 

04:54 - Kevin Trapani (Host)
Really important. Terri, first of all, thank you for tracking that stuff and the way you did. It's obvious that you're curious. You want to kind of look under the hood and find out what's causing this stuff we mentioned and you've mentioned. You heard anecdotally from other camps that these kinds of things were happening, but I have not heard anybody have the kind of data tracking that you've got. When you get 400% of something, there's something going on there, and so help us understand what were the causes of these exclusions. Was there a trend? Did you see something that you could respond to? 

05:25 - Terri Mulks (Guest)
We were sending campers home and for us that's a difficult decision and it was something that was, you know, the right thing at the right time. We were noticing that it was more and more kids. As a staff team, we were just like this can't continue to happen. So we need to really start looking at why this is happening. So we're not going into the next session this way or going into the next summer this way. I got out my Excel spreadsheet and I started making a little chart of all the kids that were going home. I was tracking a lot of things, but the two things that became most obvious to us were the grade level of the kids that were going home. We were seeing that of those 43 kids, close to 50% of them were rising fourth graders which is the youngest age group that we serve at camp. 

06:10 - Kevin Trapani (Host)
You sent home more rising fourth graders last summer than you would have sent home across the whole camp in prior summers. 

06:18 - Terri Mulks (Guest)
Exactly the other thing that we noticed of the kids that we were sending home. We were looking at cabin size, and our cabin size varies a little bit. Sometimes we have eight or nine kids in a cabin, Sometimes we have 11 or 12 kids in a cabin. Those cabins that had ratios that were one to six rather than one to five or one to four, those were the cabins that we were sending the most kids home from. It was very clear to us in looking at those two things One, that that's fallout from the pandemic because of the age group. Those are kids that missed out on key socialization in kindergarten and first grade in school because they were doing all that at home and camp was likely their first experience really being immersed into this culture Very quickly with a lot of other people and having to make those adjustments we were finding the larger cabins, which our staff has always managed very well, were almost impossible to manage with two people. 

07:17 - Paige Bagwell (Co-host)
I'm just so glad, Terri, that you looked at both of those things. The data around the gray level is phenomenal. But then adding in okay, now let's look at that kid and the ratio they were in, that's a whole story we can start to tell it's just, that's amazing that y'all track that. 

07:31 - Kevin Trapani (Host)
Yeah, and it's just the insights that come from not only operational observation, but then being reinforced by the data, which is really powerful. And I should tell you, terri, my daughter runs a school in a tough neighborhood in Boston and in this fall of 2021, when the kids came back to school for the first time, she called me on the very first day and she said Dad, without knowing I can tell which kids went to camp. 

07:52 - Terri Mulks (Guest)
Oh yeah, I'm sure. 

07:54 - Kevin Trapani (Host)
And I said, well, why is that? She said, well, they know how to line up they know how to, kind of, do what they're asked to do. They had had a whole different experience, and so that's the anecdotal observation that is reflected in your data. So tell us now you know this stuff. You have some really at least two really powerful insights. How does that, how do those insights inform how you're changing your practices now? 

08:18 - Terri Mulks (Guest)
Well, unfortunately, we've made the difficult decision that this year we're going to start with rising fifth graders rather than our rising fourth graders. That might not be a permanent change, but we're definitely going to try it this year. We just can't ignore what we knew. We had a lot of conversations around this and it was like, well, let's try again. But it's like, why are we going to put people in that situation again? Right, like it's detrimental to our community? We have made a commitment that our ratio in a cabin will be one to four. We are taking more staff and serving less kids. Wow, we are committing to that because camp is a powerful place and we want everybody to have a great experience, not just the camper experience but also the staff experience, because when you're sending home 43 kids, your staff experience isn't great either. 

09:09 - Paige Bagwell (Co-host)
Right. Well, I just. I think it's so powerful that y'all are looking at it this way because it is so easy to say, well, wait, we've always done it this way. We've got to figure out how to continue that same model and not change anything, because that's what parents expect, it's what staff expects, it's what kids expect, all those things. So you're being creative in the moment, based on the situation that you see each and every day. You kind of mentioned it. I don't know that we'll always do it this way, but we're adjusting to what we're experiencing right now. So there's some implications there, maybe some unintended consequences around those decisions. So can you talk a little bit about how that's affecting your mission and model and how y'all will move forward from that making some of these decisions? 

09:45 - Terri Mulks (Guest)
It's not a great conversation to have to have with your board and donors to say, hi, I need more money, but I'm going to serve less kids. We have a wonderful board and we have great donors and we're able to tell that story because we have data to support it. It's not just anecdotal at this point. So we've got that behind us. I also recognize that Camp Susan Curtis is very privileged to be in the position that we're in. We do not charge tuition. In the case of a traditional camp, that's going to say we're hiring more staff and serving less kids. You've got to figure out how that's going to work, which is either raising your tuition or pulling in on your reserves. 

10:32
For nonprofit camps. That's a difficult conversation to have, especially when you're a small nonprofit. You can't really raise your tuition and still expect that your enrollment's going to be where you want it to be and you also don't necessarily have a lot of reserves to pull back on. As we're having these conversations with other camps, we are recognizing our privilege that it's really us just going to our board and donors and saying this is happening, can you support that? In other cases, people are going to say can you support this financially to make sure that we're doing the right thing. I think those conversations are really hard. They're also really necessary because if you don't do it, what is going to happen to your reputation when you do have a situation or your program is not running in the way that families expect it to? So it's hard decisions and you've got to balance those things. 

11:25 - Paige Bagwell (Co-host)
But, like you said, you've got a story, you've got data that supports kind of where you are and what you're seeing, and I think you're I'm sure your board appreciates that. I mean, I've been in your position, terry, running a nonprofit and I serve on a nonprofit board now, so I certainly kind of sympathize with the hey, I'm going to need more money but I'm going to serve less people. Like I can imagine how you start that conversation with staff and board. So there's probably some listeners out there that are like my story may be a little different, but I'm pretty much given the same message. So how do camps navigate? Like you said in the beginning, you're not alone. This is happening in many camps. 

11:58 - Terri Mulks (Guest)
I think a lot of it is just being able to talk and share about what's going on, getting creative, about how you're looking at your funding. Maybe there are other ways besides an automatic tuition increase or digging into your reserves. What does your scholarship program look like? Where are you fundraising? Are you fundraising? A lot of our conversations centered around this is the mission of Camp Susan Curtis. These are the values that we have as a camp and if we don't change what we're doing and we go back to the same old same old, we're not going to be the same place. Digging into that conversation, and it's also not hard to go back and get the data from the summer to be able to say here's all these incident reports I have from the summer. Let's see what these were and who these kids were and where they were living. It's not too late to go back and get some of that data to be able to support your story of less kids, more staff. 

12:56 - Kevin Trapani (Host)
Terry, you mentioned incident reports. One of the things we know and you know, when there's inadequate staffing, there tends to be inadequate supervision. Those things are present. We tend to have a disproportionate number of injuries of various different kinds at a time when, appropriately, society does not tolerate that. We don't tolerate those kinds of mistakes. You've talked mostly about behavioral incidents. Talk a little bit about your safety record in terms of the frequency of injuries, the kinds of things that happen at camp. Beyond the behavioral side of things, we train our staff very well. 

13:31 - Terri Mulks (Guest)
It's intensive. I don't think I did a single incident report for an injury this past summer. There's the little regular things, you know. They go to the health center, they're not feeling great, walked past a tree and caught their elbow or whatever, twisted their ankle, but in general we're just not seeing those injuries and we really never have. And we're training our staff to be very, very attentive to what's happening with our kids because they are coming in with some special challenges. So I think that makes the difference a lot of the time. 

14:04 - Kevin Trapani (Host)
It's great to hear that that's the case. 

14:07
As you know from your engagement with other camps, that's not what we experienced with an awful lot of camps this summer. There was an increase in frequency and in severity as well, with camp injuries as a result of the challenges, which is why Paige asked you you're walking in some really hard conversations, because I'm sure it wasn't easy for you to get fully staffed as it was with your old ratios, and now you're improving the ratios, which makes it even tougher, and so that's why this is a hard set of messages for camp leaders to hear. But I'm really grateful for your focus, terri, because what you said was you got to lean into your mission and just say we can't be who we said we were going to be if we don't change what we do. This has been a terrific conversation, a hard conversation, a hard truth, but I think, terri, you've helped us think about things differently, and I think you've helped our listeners think about things differently as they begin to put in place a plan for summer 2024. Paige, what are your conclusions? Takeaways from today's conversation? 

15:03 - Paige Bagwell (Co-host)
Yeah, I mean this is really powerful, because I mean I love that she's tying in the data to what she saw and really challenging herself and staff and board to think about things differently. Because what Terri did not say was well, you know what, we're going to change our whole mission and our values. She actually said the opposite. She said we're going to stay true to who we are. We're just going to tweak some things to make sure that everybody involved in our camp has the best experience possible Every child, every staffer, even those you know, the volunteers and donors. 

15:31
They have that experience with us and so I hope people heard that is she hasn't changed the model of that mission and all those kind of things. She's just being creative about what's in front of her right now and how children are changing and with the pandemic and how that's affected children and doing the best they can to make sure that experience stays true to who they are, aligned with their values. And I just it doesn't mean you have to change everything, but it does give you the permission to tweak some things. And I just hope that's what people hear from her today, because they've done a really good job of looking at of what the data is telling them and how they can make those changes. 

16:04 - Kevin Trapani (Host)
Yeah, you bet. I just know, paige, you and I are camp kids and we have camp families, and we know that camp doesn't look the same way anywhere today as it did two years or five years or 25. We guard waterfronts differently, we screen and train our staff differently, we have bathroom policies that are different than they used to be, and this is what camp does right. Camp understands that things shift and we have to shift in order to continue to deliver on the transformational experience that our kids benefit from. Terry, thanks so much for the conversation today, for the work you do, and thanks for your engagement with the wider community of camps, sharing your knowledge all the time as a visitor and ACA and all that kind of stuff. 

16:46 - Terri Mulks (Guest)
Absolutely Well. Thanks for having me today. That was very, that was very fun. 

16:52 - Paige Bagwell (Co-host)
Good, I'm glad you joined us, terry. 

16:54 - Kevin Trapani (Host)
Yeah, I don't think we've ever been described as fun before Terry. 

16:56 - Paige Bagwell (Co-host)
She's describing me. Kevin, she's describing me. Oh, good point. 

16:59 - Kevin Trapani (Host)
Let me take a second and read us out here. Staffing Safety Society is created by the Redwoods Group. It's produced by Steven Dauchert, Melanie Young, Sammy Grover, Paige Bagwell, piper Kessler and me. If you like the show, tell a friend or leave us a review in the show notes. It means a lot to us. Also, if you have topic suggestions or any kind of feedback, we'd love to hear it. Go to those show notes and click on that link or send an email to community@redwoodsgroup.com. We will now begin to field all the comments there about how great Terry Mulks is. Yes, so we'll send those on to you, terry. Yeah, all that stuff means a lot to us. Staffing Safety Society is recorded weekly in North Carolina. I'm Kevin Trapani. 

17:41 - Paige Bagwell (Co-host)
And I'm Paige Bagwell. 

17:43 - Kevin Trapani (Host)
Thanks y'all for listening, take care.