Happy Trails for Kids Lets Foster Kids Celebrate Childhood

For most kids, summer equals fun. Vacations. Camp. Exciting adventures with families and friends. 

But that is often not true for children in the foster care system. For them, summer can be a very lonely time. With the routine of going to school absent and limited extracurricular options, the sense of solitude can be overwhelming.

Happy Trails for Kids offers California foster kids the chance to experience and enjoy summer camp for themselves. All too often, kids in the foster care system are forced to grow up fast and rarely get opportunities where they can just be a kid. 

The foster care system is tasked with many responsibilities, but what’s missing is the importance of celebrating and acknowledging childhood, says Lindsay Elliott, Happy Trails for Kids’ executive director and a former child welfare lawyer.

“Camp is a place where being a kid is celebrated – where having fun and being happy is prioritized,” Elliott says.

Happy Trails for Kids was founded 13 years ago by Susan Abrams. That first summer in 2009 they welcomed 60 kids. Today, the L.A.-based nonprofit serves as many as 400 campers from age seven to adulthood each year and, in addition to summer camp, offers year-round outdoor activities and events. 

A top priority is sibling reunification, as more than half of children with siblings who enter foster care are separated. For some siblings who’ve been separated, attending summer camps and Happy Trails events are the only time they get to be together. 

Prior to the pandemic, foster kids reported feelings of isolation and anxiety. With COVID, those struggles have been compounded, Elliott says. Recognizing the need for increased opportunities for camp and social activities, Happy Trails for Kids expanded its summer camp from two to three weeks, allowing 150 more children the chance to get those lifelong memories of camp. 

Campers don’t have to age out of Happy Trails for Kids either. The organization trains campers to be junior counselors. Nearly 70% of counselors hired have lived experience in foster care.

“When kids leave camp, they have a new confidence and believe in themselves,” Elliott says.