practice decision-making skills.

· Safety procedures for all activities are evaluated.

· Equipment must be monitored for repair and/or replacement.

· Many issues regarding out-of-camp trips are also evaluated.

6. Health Care

"Health care may include first aid, dispensing of medications, administration of prescribed medical treatment and.. promotion of health and wellness practices in camp" (ACA Standards Book). This is an area that was much more comprehensive than we imagined. Oak Park, of course, had first aids kits, emergency forms and general procedures to handle emergencies. But we had never looked to document specific procedures in the following areas:

· General routines for camp health care and sanitation;

· Procedures evaluated by a physician;

· Designation of a Health Care Manager;

· Emergency forms for staff members;

· Health histories for campers and staff; and

· Specific communication procedures during an emergency.

At the conclusion of that first meeting in December, we were told that a visitation team would be assigned to work with us to do the actual scoring. The team of three active ACA members were trained by ACA and volunteer their time for this process. The scoring would be done on two separate visits when a camp was trying for accreditation the first time. The first visit involved paperwork and documentation. The second visit, later in the summer, completed any scoring for paperwork, as well as site visits to observe the program.

Our first visit occurred in June of 1998. It took five to six hours to complete the scoring on paperwork and documentation. We still had a few items to complete and we were given until our second visit to finish those tasks. The second visit was in July 1998. The team completed scoring the paperwork and visited all but one location to observe the camps in action as well as check the sites and facilities. Before the team left for the day, they told us that we had very good camp programs and we should be proud of them.

On August 26 we received a call from Gordie Kaplan informing us that we had passed the accreditation process! We will receive the official letter and plaque from ACA in November, but he was able to give us our scores: Administration 100%, Site and Facilities 100%, Administration of Transportation and Vehicles 100%, Personnel 92%, Program 97% and Health Care 89%.

The results of this process are gratifying but more than that, it answered our original question: "Are we doing the best we can?" We were not perfect according to ACA National Standards, but we scored very high for a first try.

The Park District of Oak Park is the first park district in the state of Illinois to have its day camps accredited and there are only nine other city recreation departments in the nation to have done so. We are proud to display the logo showing that we are an accredited camp. This process has opened up an entire new set of resources for staff recruitment and training as well as advertising for the Park District of Oak Park.

JO AN ZIMMERMANN,CLP
is recreation program manager
for the Park District of Oak Park