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Our 2023 Counselors, celebrating another successful Courageous Kids Camp!

July 2022… Our amazing volunteer counselors, celebrating another successful Courageous Kids Camp!

Our amazing volunteer counselors, 2021

What is Courageous Kids Camp?

Courageous Kids Camp is an intensive therapeutic summer camp for children with selective mutism.  We are looking for counselors and need YOU to help us make our camp a success and help kids overcome their anxiety!  Counselors will work one-on-one with our campers to help them overcome their fear of speaking to others.  Counselors will receive intensive training and experience with intervention strategies for children with selective mutism.  These strategies are applicable to anyone who works with children with anxiety or speech challenges.  This is a rewarding and fun experience that allows you to make a big difference in a child’s life.

What are our counselors saying about training with Courageous Kids Camp?

Our survey showed that among our counselors…

100% Responded that their overall training experience was “Excellent” (73%) or “Good” (27%)

100% Responded that they would be “Extremely Likely” (92%) or “Likely” (8%) to recommend Courageous Kids Camp to others

From our counselors…

“I loved being a counselor at Courageous Kids Camp!  I learned so much!  Thank you for this wonderful opportunity.  I know that I will use these skills with my students in the future.  Excellent training and a well-organized camp.”

“This was a wonderful experience.  The training contained important and helpful information.  It is fun to collaborate with everyone and together help the kids find and use their voices.”

“Camp helped remind me of why I chose to be a social worker working with kids.  It helped me understand more about selective mutism and how to provide interventions.”

“This experience has definitely enriched my education and future professional life by providing me such a well-rounded understanding of selective mutism.”

“I loved the structure of camp, it was the perfect flow for my camper.  Pre-camp training was very in depth and the one-on-one practice was most useful to me.  My camper was never bored, which was great.”

“The entire opportunity was an amazing learning experience.”

“I love getting to be a part of this camp.  Being around the kids helps not only them, but me grow as a clinician and human. I use these skills when interacting with any new child I meet.”

“It was absolutely incredible to see how effective these methods are in helping kids find their brave voice!”

“This was an excellent training and experience.  It was professional, well-organized, and fun.”

We train and work with a multidisciplinary team, including:

• Licensed mental health professionals seeking training in working with children with SM
• Licensed Speech Language Pathologists seeking training in working with children with SM
• School personnel
  • Social workers
  • School psychologists
  • Speech therapists
  • Counselors
  • Teachers
• Graduate students in psychology, speech language pathology, social work, and education
• College students interested in gaining more experience working with children with anxiety and speech challenges

Benefits to volunteer counselors include:

• Intensive training on evidence-based treatment of selective mutism, an anxiety disorder in which children avoid talking in front of others, significantly impacting their functioning in school and other settings
• Training and experience in behavioral interventions to treat selective mutism, based on the principles of PCIT-SM (Parent-Child Interaction Therapy for Selective Mutism) and exposure therapy
  • Learning these techniques will be useful for current or future professionals planning to work with children with any type of anxiety disorder, mood disorder, or other behavioral challenges (not just selective mutism!)
• Supervised hours toward internship applications, licensure requirements, possible continuing education credits (depending on your licensing board), or other professional needs.  Always check with your licensing board to ensure training at Courageous Kids Camp will meet your professional requirements
  • Earn 25+ hours of supervised clinical experience, as well as additional training and supervision hours
  • All hours are supervised by a licensed psychologist
• For those interested in behavior therapy, exposure therapy, PCIT, and/or CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy), this is an excellent chance to get hands-on experience using these theories in a clinical setting

Interested?  Here are your next steps!

1. Please send an email expressing interest and your CV or resume to Courageous Kids Camp Director Claire Dean Sinclair, Psy.D at: [email protected].  Please apply before June 10, 2024.
2. A member of our team will contact you to set up an interview with Dr. Sinclair
3. If you are accepted into the training program, you will attend a pre-camp training session (approximately 6 hours of training), which will take place in summer of 2023
4. You are ready for camp!  The team at Courageous Kids Camp will work with you to assign one of our campers to be paired with you during camp.  You will receive live, in the moment supervision and support from the Courageous Kids Camp team.  Everyone will work together to make sure our campers have a great experience and our counselors have an amazing training opportunity!