Huge demand for children’s summer camps

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Ali Bracken Email

May 02 2021 02:30 AM

Many children’s summer camps are already booked out, leaving working parents once again faced with juggling work and childcare during the pandemic.

Eileen Sheehy, director of Letsgo.ie, one of the largest nationwide providers of summer camps, confirmed that a lot of their camps are already booked out.

“The demand for camps is huge. We will be running over 150 summer camps in venues nationwide catering for children aged 5-12 years. In fact, most of our camps are fully booked already and some have been since February. We are operating waiting lists in the hope that by the summer we may be able to take more children should things open up more,” she said. “While we are thrilled to have such a demand for our camps however, it is very difficult to disappoint children who were eagerly looking forward to attending a Let’s Go! camp this summer.”

Jill Holtz, founder of Mykidstime.com, a parenting resource, said that camp organisers and parents are somewhat “in limbo” this summer.

“It’s a bit of a messy situation. The camps will all most likely be outdoors and there has to be a reduction in numbers because of Covid. Many of the camps don’t suit the outdoors so they aren’t running or have changed to virtual camps, but that doesn’t always suit children or parents. The demand is huge, and with fewer places, a lot are already booked up,” said Ms Holtz.

Garry Lowe, who runs WhizzKids computer camps for children, said his camps have moved entirely online this summer, as they cannot be transferred to an outdoor environment. They have adapted and it “works well”, but he would prefer for the youngsters to be attending in person. “Absolutely we prefer to hold the camps in person. If we get the go-ahead for the traditional camps, we would run them alongside the virtual camps. We will run a hybrid of both types of camps going forward.”

The Gaiety School of Acting (GSA) summer camps will also remain online this year. “We took the bull by the horns and put our 35 summer camps online. We didn’t want to be messing students are parents around. We’ve done a lot of research. We thought earlier this year that drama wouldn’t adapt to online and virtual, but it has. Our focus is on reopening the school fully in September,” said Lauren O’Toole of GSA.

Ms O’Toole added that as its summer camps were previously only available in Dublin, the virtual camps now mean that children from all over the country can attend.