Safety and Risk Management for Summer Camps
Camp gives young people belonging, confidence, independence, and experiences they carry throughout their lives. Protecting those experiences requires practical systems that help staff recognize risk, make sound decisions, and respond effectively when conditions change.
Cornerstone helps summer camps strengthen their safety, medical, mental health, and emergency response systems – whether change is prompted by new legislation or a commitment to do what is right.
What Camp Leaders Are Managing Today
Every season asks more of camp leaders and staff. You are building emergency action plans, tracking new state requirements, training seasonal staff, screening participants, managing medical and mental health needs, and maintaining the culture that makes your camp what it is – often with a small team and limited time.
A concern involving one camper can affect the entire group, the staff in the field, the families at home, and the broader camp community. You need systems your team can rely on.
You do not have to build these systems alone.
How Cornerstone Supports Camps
Here's how Cornerstone works alongside your team at every stage of the season.
Before Camp Begins
We help leaders build and strengthen the systems that support staff and campers throughout the season.
Environmental and communication procedures
Seasonal staff and crisis response team training, tabletop exercises, and emergency drills
Medication policies and standard operating procedure reviews
Mental health and behavioral response protocols
Third-party provider review
While Camp Is Operating
No plan is perfect. We help members assess changing conditions and make decisions grounded in their programs and people.
Active support for Incident Command during an emergency
Internal and external communications
Coordinated risk management, medical, and mental health guidance
Decisions that keep people at the center
After an Incident or Season
Learning is an essential part of strong risk management. We help camps take stock after an incident or at season's end and carry what they learn forward.
Incident and near-miss debriefs with leaders and staff
Human-centered follow-up after significant events
Updated plans, protocols, and training
Communication of appropriate findings to organizational leaders
One Team Across Risk, Medical, and Mental Health
Safety and Risk Management
Risk management advisors who help camps evaluate hazards, prepare staff, and build systems that work in the realities of camp.
Medical Advising
Physicians who help camps strengthen health screening, medical protocols, and response to illness and injury, including in remote settings.
Mental Health Advising
Mental health professionals who help camps prepare for behavioral and emotional needs. Our role is triage and support.
How Camp Safety Legislation Is Changing
States across the country are passing new camp safety laws covering emergency action plans, weather monitoring, communication systems, staff training and drills, background checks, and staffing ratios. Requirements differ by state and camp type, but the direction is clear: your camp is being asked to show that your plans are specific, practiced, and workable.
Meeting a written requirement is the starting point, not the finish. Your camp can check every box and still be unprepared if staff do not understand their roles or evacuation procedures have never been practiced.
Cornerstone tracks these changes state by state and helps you move from requirements on paper to systems your team can actually use.
What New Camp Safety Laws Mean for Your Camp
See what's enacted, what's pending, and what it means for your camp.
Ways to Work With Cornerstone
Membership
Choose membership when you want an ongoing relationship and year-round access to Cornerstone's integrated expertise. Membership includes advisor hours across risk management, medical, and mental health, 90+ protocols, templates, and practical resources, webinars and professional development, member networking, and emergency response support.
Consulting
Choose consulting when you need help completing a defined project with a specific scope, deliverables, and endpoint. Projects range from emergency action plan and Incident Command development to staff training, tabletop exercises and drills, medical and mental health protocols, and comprehensive camp safety reviews.
What Members Say
Training was fantastic and perfect in helping our guides put our practices into action in real scenarios. This is the second year we've had Cornerstone join our staff and it's immensely beneficial!
Other Camps We Work With
Cornerstone supports day camps, overnight camps, and youth programs, including:
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Cornerstone is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. We help camps identify operational questions, evaluate existing systems, and translate changing requirements into practical policies, plans, training, and documentation.
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The absence of new legislation does not eliminate the need for effective risk management systems. Many camps begin this work because their leaders, boards, insurers, families, or staff want greater confidence in how the organization prepares for and responds to risk.
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Yes. We begin by identifying your most immediate needs and then develop a realistic sequence of priorities. That may mean addressing a specific legislative requirement, revising an emergency plan, preparing seasonal staff, or beginning with a broader assessment.
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Yes. We tailor our guidance to the camp’s setting, participants, activities, staffing model, operating season, and available resources.
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Yes. All members can engage Cornerstone for emergency-management support during business hours. Members with call center access can activate Cornerstone outside business hours. During a significant incident, we can serve as an active member of the broader crisis response team and assist with the Incident Command function, communications, human-centered support, and the overarching response.
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Accreditation is a strong foundation, and we encourage it. Accreditation standards, state requirements, and your camp's own operations each ask something different of your team, and they change on different schedules. Cornerstone helps camps bring all three together: keeping practices aligned with standards, understanding new legal requirements, and preparing staff to use the plans behind both.
Common Questions
You Don't Have to Do This Alone
The goal is not to make camp risk-free. It is to give leaders and staff the systems, preparation, and support they need to make good decisions when it matters most. Whatever brings you to this work, Cornerstone is ready to stand alongside you.