Recreation Therapy

This summer, the Recreation Therapy department completed its 65th year of medical camping at Bradford Woods. When the first camps began in 1955, the scope was limited to children with diabetes and polio. Today, we’ve made huge advances. Thanks to the generous support of Riley Children’s Foundation, in 2019 Camp Riley served 330 children with a wide range of diagnoses hailing from 64 Indiana counties and 10 states. 340 additional campers were served through our amazing partner camps: Camp Little Red Door, CHAMP Camp, MDA Camp, Camp ROCKS, and Camp PossAbility. 

For each of our campers, Bradford Woods is about enjoying a barrier-free experience and building lifelong relationships. Each year, we hire more than 80 seasonal staff with a variety of backgrounds to ensure camp runs smoothly and to live out our primary philosophies of engaging, empathizing, and empowering.

The Beyond the Woods program, now in its third official year, enjoyed its highest ever attendance in 2019. This program pairs adolescent campers with a physical disability or medical condition with a mentor with similar life experiences. Campers and mentors discuss life issues through regularly scheduled facilitated online meetings, as well as events at Bradford Woods throughout the year. 

In 2019, we continued successful partnerships with IU Underwater Science to provide adapted SCUBA diving and with the Rehabilitation Hospital of Indiana to provide adapted waterskiing to our Riley 3 and Venture Campers.  A grant from the IU Women’s Philanthropy Council enabled us to partner with IU School of Medicine faculty member Deb Sokol to provide an adapted ballet clinic for Riley 3 campers. Grant funding will also help launch a new Pediatric Brain Tumor family camp this fall.

Tommy Gardner, who has served as the Assistant Director of Medical Camping since 2016, moved into the Interim Director role at the beginning of the summer before taking the position permanently in August. We are thrilled to have Tommy continue on our team and look forward to seeing his leadership in this program area.