Frustrated/Upset with Council RE: Food @ Camp

[Twocubdad]

Sounds like a whole lot of people looking to make their jobs easier rather than looking out for the best interest of the boys.

 

We have a boy in our troop with severe kidney problems and is on a very restricted low sodium diet. At camp last week at every meal there was a special cart at the end of the serving line with a pre-made tray with his name on it. There were usually five or six such trays on the cart. Camps can accommodate special needs, if your council will take the Scout Oath and Law to heart.

[boomerscout]

the camp you originally thought to attend sounds worse than useless. I can understand not wanting RVs on the campgrounds; so why couldn't it be accessed in the parking lot?

Most cooks don't like strangers in their kitchen. However, even these dummies need to realize that food allergies are increasing exponentially as we go to factory food.

I am surprised your troop is not standing with your son

[Liz]

The parking lot would have been fine with me... I do understand that space is limited, resources are limited, and everything... Really, the only real accommodation I was asking for was for someone to talk to me (since I've never been to the camp) and help me to devise and execute a plan which would leave little or no impact on their staffing or facilities. The RV was just what came to mind as making the most sense to me and the other adults in my troop I talked to about it. A bonus for me personally is that, being pregnant, I like to be a few steps away from my bathroom. But that's not a dealbreaker and I would have been OK with anything...

 

Oh well, it's over now unless they actually bar the other boy from attending camp, in which case I'm going to have to open a can of whoop--- on them when I hear of it. Because that would be just spite and punishes the entire troop for me calling them on their mistake.

[AlamanceScouter]

This just blows my mind. Just crazy how horrible they treated you and your son.

 

This also scares me as my son has a severe allergy to nuts.

[Lisabob]

Hi there Alamance,

 

Don't let it scare you. We have taken boys with severe allergies (including nuts) to several different scout camps. Most camps have bent over backward to work with us to the satisfaction of all concerned. It can be done, although it requires advance planning and lots of follow up to make sure things go smoothly.

 

Based on my experience, I think what Liz is describing is an aberration (though one that could have been handled by the camp and council staff much better, had they collectively had three working brain cells to rub together). On the other hand, one lesson to learn from Liz's experience is that there needs to be a designated person tasked with dealing with the major food/health issues prior to camp, and lots of double checking to ensure that designated person doesn't drop the ball. Parents of kids with major health issues should be encouraged (by their troop adult leaders and the camp staff) to ask 1000 questions, and most camps I've dealt with have encouraged parents to call and speak directly with the kitchen manager, well in advance of the start of camp.

[GKlose]

I'm just back from a patrol-oriented summer camp -- during the week, I stopped in a couple of times to chat with the commissary staff (two women), to modify some choices (it was way too hot for cocoa in the morning, for example) and to read a couple of labels (does their canned spaghetti sauce have dairy in it?).

 

Along the way, I figured out something -- just in our own troop, we have a couple of vegetarians, one severe peanut allergy and one severe dairy and egg allergy. The commissary staff told me those aren't so hard to deal with, that it's the gluten-free diets that are hard to accommodate.

 

I worked in a summer camp kitchen almost 30 years ago. Things sure have changed. We didn't have to deal with allergies to this extent back then.

 

By the way, from a patrol cooking sense, with a single patrol cook kit and griddle, the hardest thing we had to deal with was cross-contamination between dairy/egg, vegetarian and meat products. Sometimes our meals took a little longer to prep, I think. I'll admit that I jumped in a couple of times, to help clean the griddle really well between stages (french toast and bacon, for example). Another difficult part was cooking and cleanup arrangements. The vegetarian didn't want to cook or clean up things used to prep meat-based meals, and likewise with the dairy-egg allergy sufferer.

 

Guy

[Luvtahike]

I recently came back from our local scout camp. I had communicated with the camp chef precamp which was a negative experience. So I was prepared to cook on my backpacking stove or coleman stove and keep my food in a cooler in my truck. Since the temp didn't go below 90 during the day, I am really glad I didn't have to keep my food cold! More on that in a moment!

 

When I arrived at camp, my husband and I went to see what the story was in the kitchen. I mostly wanted to find out where the microwave was as that was the only thing I expected to access after the precamp meeting. Well, the kitchen staff were most welcoming. They suggested I bring my food in and they would help me find a place for it. They said I could use both fridge and freezer space along with the microwave. Also there was shelf space for my dry goods. It was about 2 or 3 hours later that I was able to get my food to the kitchen. There was another very accomodating kitchen person. She showed me where to put everything. I found out at that time that there was another person at camp that had celiac and dairy issues.

 

Overall, this all worked out well. I talked to the camp director on the 3rd day of camp. He totally understood my frustration about what happened before camp. We discussed the need for a procedure with much better communication. Once the kitchen staff understood what the other gluten/dairy person and I had for issues, they made us some egg casserole with ham and no cheese, another time they had pot roast and didn't put gravy on one for just he and I! We were able to eat some of the breakfasts and some of the dinners during the week. The lunches were usually more difficult but there was more time to make my own meal then.

 

I ate lots of applesauce, graham crackers(homemade), fruit roll ups and chips. There was one lunch that had hamburgers. I used a Jillians french roll. That was a great lunch! I also enjoyed lots of hard boiled eggs from home, awesome soup, fruit and found the best lemonade in the camp store! Progresso chicken and rice soup is really good, really easy and worked especially well for me. And, of course, the scouts in my group (and some of the staff) liked sitting at the same table as me if a meal was really good! They got to eat more food! (except on the eggs and sausage day. I got all the extras that meal. LOL)

 

There were no air borne nut allergies at camp that week so I was allowed to eat nuts but not in the dining hall. I always had them in a place where I could wash my hands thoroughly right after eating.

 

Skittles are something that I could get at the camp store! Yeah!

 

Would I do it again? You bet! I'm going to shop on Amazon for things to make my life a little easier when traveling, camping, etc. like salad dressing and my butter substitute in single serving packets. I'm going to perfect my cookies and figure out how to freeze them. Before leaving home, I had frozen some sliced bread. That worked out really well! I took a serving out the night before or in the morning and let them sit in my crate of food. Microwaving things was easy but time consuming. There was the celiac scout and another scout with a latex allergy. We all had great attitudes about what we were dealing with. That made a huge difference!

 

I hope this info helps someone else!

[Liz]

Good to hear your experience was positive!

 

There's a website where you can buy all sorts of interesting things in single-serve packets for a reasonable price: Minimus.biz -- items include gluten-free soy sauce, individual packets of peanut butter, and a variety of salad dressings. Actually, it's a good place for anybody to stop by... they don't specialize in "special diets" per se, but just in reasonable prices for single-use and single-serve items and they do have a fair number of things which happen to be gluten-free or whatever.

[Luvtahike]

Hi Liz,

 

What a cool website! That is exactly what I need. It is really frustrating to go to a great restaurant and have to worry about the salad dressing. Mostly it is dairy that gets me there. This will really help. Have you checked out some of the other links that were posted here? There are some awesome ones.

 

Thanks to everyone else who posted! I got some great info from you that I am already using!

[Phibbles]

Liz - I hope you still plan to respond to the letter from council. Don't waste time pointing out all the errors they made, but instead educate them on where they fell short on providing the minimum service you deserved. You could be doing lots of future scouts a favor by putting up a small fight for the cause.

[Liz]

I did respond that night (July 2). I haven't received anything back yet. Not even a refund.

I do need to keep going with this, but at the moment I'm not feeling very well... I think I've got a mild virus (husband is home from work today sick, too), plus all the normal late-pregnancy-exhaustion. I just don't have the energy to deal with it right now. I was near the Council office the other day and thought about stopping in, but all I could think about was coming home and crawling into bed so I figured it wouldn't be the best time.

At the very least I need to know exactly how/when they are issuing the refund. Are they mailing me a check? Crediting the Troop? So I will need to contact them at some point anyway & I need to be prepared to discuss the rest of the issues as well. I'm just not sure who the best person to talk to is, whether it's the lawyer who wrote me the letter or someone else.

[Lisabob]

I'm not sure who the best person is either (the SE,maybe?) but I can bet that the lawyer is **not** the best person to talk to, if you want to have a real conversation and not just a "cover the bases" kind of conversation. Good luck, and take it easy for the rest of your summer.

[WAKWIB]

Liz: Concerning a refund. This is not carved in stone, but you should probably expect a credit to the Troop's account at the council office. In my council, a cash-refund to individuals simply will not happen.

[artjrk]

We had a scout who had to drop out of camp at the last minute due to health reasons. The camp is refunding the costs but the request has to come from the troop. Reason being is the troop is the one who actually wrote the check to the camp. The scouts paid their money to the troop.

 

Also since the camp was out of council we need to send the troop's request through our council office to the camp's council office.