At Pine Cove, your child’s safety informs every decision we make. Our comprehensive safety plan covers staff screening, abuse prevention, emergency action plans, weather safety, medical care, and activity safety. We are fully committed to the safety of your child. It is a responsibility we hold with the utmost care.
"Seriously, we continue to come back year-after-year because we believe so strongly in the fact that you run a quality, safe camp where our children can grow to be great disciples of Christ." - Julie, 6th Grade Camper Parent
Learn more about our safety approach, including how we secure our properties, provide medical care, and certify our activities.
We weave abuse prevention into our entire camp environment, through training, monitoring, and feedback systems. Our entire staff undergoes extensive training on the rules and procedures we have in place to prevent any type of abuse. Everyone must pass a test on these abuse prevention concepts. Watch our Executive Vice President, Taylor Jervis, take an in-depth look at the policies and procedures we take to ensure the safety of our campers.
At Pine Cove, we believe your child is a precious gift, and we treat that trust as a sacred responsibility. Many of us are parents or grandparents ourselves, and we understand that peace of mind is the foundation of a great summer; that’s why we maintain an uncompromising standard of safety through a rigorous, multi-layered strategy from our third-party safety partner, Praesidium, that starts on day one.
Some important safety measures include:
Reporting: When issues are reported, our priority is always the safety and protection of the child. In any instance of suspected abuse, Pine Cove is a mandatory reporter and we are trained to let parents know what the camper has shared, and report directly to the Department of Family and Protective Services as well as the police if needed. Furthermore, we make it abundantly clear to all staff that we will take legal action to the full extent of the law for any malicious intentions to harm a camper, with no exceptions.
Issues can also be reported to us by:
Explore our comprehensive safety strategy: emergency response plans, weather monitoring, and environmental safety practices.
We love "liquid sunshine," but we don't take any chances with the weather! Pine Cove utilizes Perry Weather Alerts to monitor all vital weather conditions in real time. This system provides advance notice of National Weather Service alerts—including tornado watches, severe thunderstorms, lighting strikes, flood, and wind or hail warnings—and enables us to notify our staff promptly if there’s any need to seek shelter or respond in another way. There's also a backup weather radio if needed. Our senior counselors, nurses, and full-time staffers are all equipped with cell phones or walkie talkies, enabling quick communication across camp.
Pine Cove does not take lightly our calling to find the best and safest staff. Pine Cove hires less than 30% of all applicants.
Each of our overnight youth camps has a licensed nurse and all of our camps have health assistants on duty 24 hours a day. All physical camp properties have an on-site medical clinic and are within twenty minutes of a hospital. Additionally, all medications are administered to campers and staff by nursing professionals.
To ensure the safety of all campers, no medications are allowed in a cabin or anywhere outside of the health centers, except for rescue inhalers, diabetic supplies, and epi-pens. For more information on medication at camp, check out our helpful guide. Hand washing is another important part of our illness prevention strategy. We require campers to wash their hands before meals and provide numerous handwashing stations and hand sanitizer to help keep germs at bay.
