Summer Camp Counselors: Just Who Exactly is Looking After Our Kids?

Breaking and Entering, Grand Theft Auto, Drunk in Public, Sex Offender. These charges seem like they belong to a career criminal. However, someone with this sort of rap sheet could be responsible for looking after your son or daughter overnight. Sounds scary? What if your child's counselor was a pedophile? While summer camps provide an opportunity for children to meet new friends and gain new experiences, their counselors may also pose a danger to the wellbeing of your child.

Let's be honest, summer camps won't hire just anybody. If a potential counselor looks like they may be a bad fit to be around kids, they probably won't be working with your children. Conversely, potential counselors who are either impressive in person or appear well qualified usually get hired. Most of the time, the counselors who are hired are a great influence on children and do their jobs well. However, as the old expression says "a few bad apples will spoil the whole darn bunch." Thus, no matter how many great counselors there are, it only takes a few undesirables to harm your child or disrupt his or her life.

It would be unfair to expect everyone to have a spotless past. Heck, we all get into a little trouble now and then. However, a criminal record (especially one involving children) is inexcusable for someone who is going to be mentoring or looking after our children. Though a reformed criminal is supposed to be considered a safe member of the community, most parents really don't want these individuals looking after our kids.

Even worse than having a criminal past may be those who are headed for a criminal future. According to a recent NY Times article, researchers discovered pedophiles that targeted camps with young children that were hiring counselors. These pedophiles then applied for jobs at the camps with one reportedly getting hired. Though it is disturbing to think about, working at a summer camp gives pedophiles an enormous opportunity to harm our children.

The time is now for children's summer camps to toughen up their counselor screening process. One simple method of achieving safer candidates for children is the background check. The common background check found at search sites like PeopleFinders.com can provide camps with a wealth of information about potential counselors including criminal history, residential history, aliases, age and marital status. This information can be used in numerous ways by a camp to eliminate a candidate immediately (as in the case of certain criminal convictions) or raise a "red flag" on a counseling candidate (as in the case of multiple aliases or residences). Therefore, background checks enable a camp more protection from potentially harmful counselors than do traditional hiring methods of interviewing and simple resume review.

Parents, however, don't have to rely on a camp to screen out detrimental counselors. The simplicity and inexpensiveness of online background checks allows parents to easily check on any member of their child's camp staff. These checks allow a parent to personally determine if a particular counselor is worthy of being responsible for his or her child.

In writing this article, it is our hope at PSN that parents will not take for granted the potentially devastating effects a camp counselor could have on their children. Please inquire with your child's camp if their hiring process includes background checks. If it doesn't, you might be wise to conduct one on your own.