Day Camp Staffing & Risk Management in 2027

Opening Program | Wednesday, March 3, 2027

Staff are one of the most essential parts of our camp risk management plans. Having adequate staffing and training, and the means to access resources, directly relates to the quality and safety of the campers in our care. However, staffing is a complex challenge for most camps.

Join us for a lively discussion on all things staffing and day camps where we’ll tackle and discuss ratios, ages, wages, and hiring practices! We have assembled subject matter experts for this panel in HR, insurance, youth development, and risk management, including actual day camp professionals who hire, train, and strategize their staffing teams. Together, we’ll explore best practices for training and supervision, and examine day camp staffing through a lens of risk management and program quality.

Meet the Speaker Panelists & Moderator

Interested in learning more about our Opening Keynote Panelists? Click the button below to learn more about these incredible people!

Anti-Racism Is Safety:

Because Safe for Some Isn’t Safety for All

We spend a lot of time preparing for what could go wrong at camp. We check the equipment. Watch the weather. Train our staff. Practice emergency procedures. We prepare for the harm we know how to see.

But what happens when the harm is racial?

A young person can make it through an entire summer without a scraped knee, allergic reaction, or trip to the healthcare center and still leave our care having been harmed. Because when we say safety, we are talking about more than emergency preparedness. We are talking about whether every young person can walk into our spaces fully as themselves without their race or identity becoming something they must defend, explain, minimize, or survive.

In this closing keynote, Dr. Tim challenges us to expand what we mean when we say, “Our camp is safe.”

Through powerful stories, research, and situations that will feel uncomfortably familiar, we’ll examine the everyday moments where racial harm can be overlooked, dismissed, or left for young people to navigate on their own. More importantly, we’ll explore what anti-racist leadership asks adults to notice, interrupt, and change.

You’ll leave with the SAFE Framework, practical tools for your team, and a question we should all be willing to answer: If a space is safe for some of our campers but not all of them, can we really call it safe?

Every camper deserves adults who are prepared to see harm, respond to it, and act.

Safe for some isn’t safety for all.

Meet the Keynote Speaker