Summer camp costs a 'sticker shock' for parents

As students return to class this week after March break, most parents are already looking ahead to the next school holiday – and planning child-care for the summer months.

But as the cost of living continues to increase, so does the cost of summer camps, and it can put a strain on families already on stretched budgets.

“Our first thing to do is find that unpaid care, right? Mom’s going to take her vacation time, dad’s going to take his vacation time,” says Wilfrid Laurier economics professor Tammy Schirle. “We’re going to find grandma and see if we can go see her.”

It takes some strategic scheduling to cover off about eight to nine weeks of care, and you have to be prepared well before registration even opens.

“When we first go live, we have 200 to 300 users accessing our site to try to get into the weeks they want,” says Annie Rowland, the founder of Camp Alliwannado in Tavistock.

Rowland founded the camp 11 years ago, when she noticed Tavistock didn’t have a municipal summer camp program.

“We were kind of doubling our enrollment every year, until we kind of hit a peak in the past couple of years,” she says.

Now she’s forming the same type of partnership with the Township of North Dumfries, to open a summer day camp in Ayr using municipal facilities.

Municipally-run camps are typically the most affordable, but fill up quickly.

Some day camps can cost as much as $300 a week or more.

“You’re looking at those prices and you’re facing the sticker shock,” Schirle says. “You’re expecting those prices that you saw in 2019, and they’re hugely different than what they were in 2019.”

But Schirle says the data they’re looking at shows wages and employment have largely kept up with these costs.

“So it’s the same financial situation I would have been in a few years ago, but $300 looks like a lot of money,” she adds.

Schirle reminds parents to hold onto their receipts to claim the child-care costs and get some of that money back at tax time.

Registration for municipally-run summer camps in Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge is now open. Click below for more information:

• Kitchener
• Waterloo
• Cambridge