Gift sends children with cleft lip and palate to camp
It’s the first summer camp most of these 12 kids have ever attended—and it’s designed just for them. Here, no one teases them about the way they talk or about the scars on their faces. Instead, the Happy Campers Speech Camp makes these children feel safe and, best of all, normal.
The Happy Campers Speech Camp at the Barrow Children’s Cleft and Craniofacial Center is providing intense speech therapy—disguised as fun activities—to children, ages 5-11, with severe speech problems due to cleft lip and palate. The six-hour-a-day camp took place this year from June 7 through June 18.
Each day includes playtime, a creative project or craft, lunch, sport/motor activity time, board games, speech drills, and a session with a psychologist to discuss issues like teasing and self-esteem. For speech pathologist Deborah Leach, MA, CCC-SP, the camp has been a 10-year dream.
“I’ve watched kids born with craniofacial disorders grow up. I’ve seen how long it takes them to make progress,” she says. “And I’ve thought, ‘If I could just have these kids for a couple of weeks, I think I could make a lot of progress with their speech.’”
Leach’s dream came true after Shelby Butterfield, a member of St. Joseph’s Foundation’s Board of Directors, watched a video about the craniofacial center during a tour of the hospital. In the video, the children talked about how they feel when people can’t understand what they’re trying to say and when other kids tease them.
“She was so moved, she wrote a check that day,” Leach says.
Butterfield’s contribution made it possible for all 12 children to attend the camp at no charge.
“Every parent was overwhelmed with gratitude, every single parent,” Leach says.
The children are equally excited about the first-year camp, says Leach. Some are waking their parents up at 5 a.m. to go to camp, and others don’t want to leave at the end of the day. They’re especially interested in the tickets they earn throughout the day for “good speech”—tickets they collect and use to buy toys.
Cleft lip and palate is the most common birth defect of the face. It occurs when the gaps in an unborn child’s lips and palate do not close as they normally do. A child with cleft lip and palate typically undergoes six to 10 surgeries, along with speech therapy and psychological counseling, between birth and 21 years of age. Eating problems, speech difficulties, and self-esteem issues are common among these children.
Assisting Leach at the Happy Campers Speech Camp are Kelli Frisch, MS CCC-SLP, speech pathologist; Adrian Porter, psychologist; Kristen Bakalis, Child Life specialist; and five speech pathology graduate students from Arizona State University.
The Barrow Children’s Cleft and Craniofacial Center is the only accredited craniofacial program in the Valley and the only program of its kind in the Southwest. The center cares for about 6,400 children, ages zero-21. Patients come from throughout Arizona, as well as from parts of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas.
