CAMP SAFETY WORKGROUP CONVENES IMPORTANT ROLE
LOS ANGELES — California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a 2024 bill to explore the state’s first comprehensive camp safety initiative, and now a host of top agencies are working with Meow Meow Foundation to devise measures that will further protect more than a million children at thousands of camps.
Following individual stakeholder meetings and independent research throughout 2025, Assistant Director of Community Care Licensing, Shanice Orum, has convened two workgroup sessions since February of this year. Community Care Licensing is a division of the Department of Social Services which oversees approximately 35,000 child care operations.
The workgroup is comprised of multibillion dollar agencies including the Department of Public Health, Department of Education and Department of Parks and Recreation alongside a variety of county and city agencies and independent advocacy groups, including Meow Meow Foundation, the primary advocate for the bill.
Meow Meow Foundation President-Founder Doug Forbes said that, while these meetings have been productive and Orum has been responsive and invested, the proof is ultimately in the pudding.
“It is heartwarming to see this wheel finally in motion after nearly seven years of pleading with everyone from the governor on down,” Forbes said. “It’s one thing that the state is Investing millions of dollars into this effort, but it’s another to actually enact and enforce meaningful oversight that will prevent harm at summer camps throughout the country’s most populous state.”
A variety of lobby operations had aggressively opposed the bill for years, including the American Camp Association, the Boy Scouts of America (Scouting America), county associations and regional camp associations. Forbes believes their concerns over costs for additional resource implementation are largely unfounded. Potential mandates such as licensing, health supervision and high risk activity certifications would require nominal investments in measures that can prevent personal injury or even death, as in the case of Forbes’ daughter Roxie who drowned in the Summerkids camp pool under shocking circumstances.
“As far as I’m concerned, any camp or any collective of camps that cannot afford to license their facilities and implement enforceable, fundamental health and safety provisions should not operate in the first place,” said Forbes. “Parents want and deserve a level of care that ensures their most precious cargo stays safe at places operated by people we largely do not know but in whom we place a lot of trust.”
The workgroup is now set to splinter into a variety of focus groups that will further define a children’s camp, identify the responsible government agency for the respective oversight role, develop minimum heath and safety requirements and produce a cost-benefit analysis.
The objective is to present all of these findings to the state legislature this year after which an amended bill would mandate enforcement.