ACA Visit Success!

The American Camp Association is a 100-year-old organization of summer camps and individuals dedicated to helping “preserve, promote, and improve the camp experience” by sharing knowledge, conducting research, and developing continuing educational opportunities for summer camps in America. Part of this mission is an accreditation process that defines for summer camps key points of quality, health and safety, effectively identifying industry standards. If a camp chooses to meet these standards— there are almost 300 of them— it can be “ACA accredited” and thereby be understood as a program with “a solid foundation of health, safety, and program quality” with exceptional “accountability, credibility, and commitment,” as the ACA puts it. Being ACA accredited is not easy. In fact, only about 20% of the summer camps in America have the distinction of having this accreditation.

You are probably not surprised to learn, if you didn’t know already, that Rockbrook is an ACA accredited camp. All aspects of Rockbrook’s operation, facilities, programing, and staff qualifications have been evaluated and shown to meet or exceed the ACA accreditation standards. We have held this distinction since the late 1980s, being one of the first camps in the area to be accredited.

To maintain this accreditation, the ACA requires an on-site visit/inspection every 3 years to demonstrate and document a camp’s compliance to the standards, and today was Rockbrook’s “visit.” I am happy to report that our two “visitors,” after touring everything at camp, the activity areas, cabins, kitchen, Infirmary, and waterfront, and after examining a 5-inch think binder of documents describing Rockbrook’s policies and procedures, were very impressed. This visit, being so thorough, took all day, but in the end, we nicely sailed through everything. It was a great day touring our ACA visitors around camp. Their knowledge and quick praise of what we are doing at Rockbrook made everyone here feel good.