Barretstown Gang Camp, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke, 2003

A frosty morning, just outside BallymoreEustace, Co Kildare.  Approaching a medieval castle called Barretstown, all is quiet, except for a few brave birds and the sun is struggling to thaw the frozen lakes.  Inside the dining hall, it is almost freezing but the heating system is clanking itself awake.  Brian Lenihan, the minister has already made a speech to declare the Barretstown Gang Camp officially open for this year.  Families of children with cancer are seated around the hall, at wooden bench tables.  Some of the children are bald, many of them wear hats.    Schedules are handed out, for the day’s activities, which will include climbing ropes and canoeing. Maria Molloy is here for the Family Day, with her son Declan and a small group of his friends.  She laughs at me and says I am not dressed for the occasion, because I will be required to climb the High Ropes, shortly.  Maria is an exuberant young woman and cannot contain her enthusiasm for Barretstown.  She is thrilled to be here and so is Declan.  He’s recovering from leukaemia, although you would not know that, to look at him, he looks like an exceptionally healthy ten year old, eager to get started on the High Ropes.
 “This is International Childhood Cancer Day,’ says Miriam who is in charge of Public Relations at Barretstown.  She’s a vivacious blonde in her twenties, in a groovy knitted coat, carrying a walkie talkie.  She’s taking me on a tour of the facilities and I’ve promised to catch up with Declan at the lake.
“ In Ireland, we have a great cure rate for children with cancer, 75%, on average and there are a hundred and thirty new cases every year.  We take children from other countries, where they don’t yet have the same facilities.  Barretsown is entirely self-funded and we need four million euros a year, to run it.” 
The concept was that of Paul Newman, the actor, who set up Gang Camps like this one all over America and selected Barretstown to be the European base for the organisation.  He himself donated the two million pounds to refurbish the castle, which is rented from the Irish government for one euro thirty seven cents a year.  He comes over once every two years, to see how it’s going and he’s due to visit this year, even though he’s seventy nine.  Fundraising events include a ball, every year and a golf classic and various other events and some of the pharmaceutical companies pledge money.  The camp was opened in 1994, with a hundred and twenty four children and last year was host to fourteen hundred and fifty children with cancer and several hundred parents and siblings. 
Maria and Declan are taking part in a Family Weekend.  Research, Miriam says, has found that the whole family is affected, when a child has cancer. 
“The other children are often shipped out to neighbours, to be babysat, it’s very hard on them.  The family arrives on Friday evening and on the Saturday, the parents will be taken to Ballymore Eustace for a drink!  Often, we would have parents saying to us that that is their first night out together, in a number of years.  So it’s fabulous for them to come down here for the weekend and spend time with other families who have been through the very same thing.”
The criteria for coming here are that the children are within four years of active treatment for cancer and that they are recommended by their doctor. 
We take a walk up to the cottages, where the children stay.  There are twelve cottages, all cosy and bright, with fireplaces and bunkbeds.  Much of the emphasis here is on giving children who have had cancer an opportunity to regain some of the confidence and independence, which the illness has destroyed.
            “A lot of the time, parents of children with cancer will wrap them in cotton wool, through no fault of their own,” Miriam says.  “And we give the children back a bit of independence.  From the moment they arrive, that’s happening.  A very important part of the therapeutic recreation programme is the reflective process.  During the day, all the children will be out doing their activities.  At around nine, they will come back and light the fire and the caras, or volunteers encourage them to talk about what they enjoyed, during the day and what they didn’t enjoy.  The children slowly start to discover that they can do things they didn’t really think they could do.  And we like to think that whatever life may throw at these children, after they leave here, they will think back to their time in Barrettstown, when they did have the confidence to try these things.”  
            Group acticities involve team building and working together to achieve goals, such as getting all the children in your team over a wall, or through the rubber spider’s web. 
“If it’s safe, they are allowed to try it,’ Miriam laughs.  “One girl had a prosthetic limb and she took it off, to help the other kids climb over!  We provide an emotionally and physically safe environment for the children.  She probably wouldn’t have done that, if she was in the school yard.  When we get the children here first, some of them don’t have hair and a lot of them will be spending time in the bathroom, in the morning, adjusting wigs or hats or scarves.  But within three or four days, they are going around without the hats, they are here to be just children, which is something that they haven’t been since the illness was diagnosed.  They are here to have serious fun!  And to have their confidence built at the same time.”
            Because Paul Newman is an actor and is enthusiastic about the confidence that acting gives you, he was adamant that they build a state of the art theatre.  Michael Smurfit provided the money to build it.  The Abbey donated costumes.  Some of the parents are in here now, dancing a little nervously to “Reach  For the Stars”. 
“The parents get quite a fright when they come for a family weekend,” Miriam assures me.  ‘They don’t expect to have to participate!”.
            There is no television at Barretstown. 
‘No television, no Playstation and no mobile phones.  But they manage absolutely fine.  It’s go, go, go, from the time they wake up in the morning. No child has ever complained!’
            Maria is watching Declan canoeing with his friends.  He’s been here twice, for the ten day residential in August and he’ll come again this year.
            “The first time, I’ll never forget.  He said “Mam, I don’t think I’ll bother going to Barretstown.”  This was when he’d just come out of hospital, he was diagnosed at nine, with leukaemia.  And because I had spent so much time with him in the hospital, he’d grown very attached to me.  And I have another boy, Stephen, who is seven now and I knew I had to spend time with him, after having a full year with Declan in the hospital.  He was being passed from grandparents to friends to neighbours. And one night he asked me when Declan was going to be better, and my heart went out to him.  So I said ‘I do think you will go!” 
So off Declan went.  And the experiment was successful.
“I can’t even describe it, he came home a different child!              It was all ‘Mam, look what I can do!’ He could do so many things.  Before, it would have been a big ordeal for Declan to do anything on his own.  He was very shy and he had become very dependent on me, I used to sleep beside him in the hospital.  He would know my every move and he had a mobile to ring me, even if I went to get a cup of coffee.  Now he comes home and tells everybody what a wonderful place this is, he’s brought two neighbours with him today.”
The most important thing that Barretstown does, according to Maria, is to bridge the gap between hospital and normal life.  Because when a child is sick, they are out on a limb, in all kinds of ways.  Apart from the actual illness and the physical symptoms, such as weakness and hair loss, they miss out on a great deal of schooling and fall behind, so that their friends can end up in a class above them and they feel left out and isolated.
“ What this place is wonderful for is getting the children back to some sort of normality,” says Maria.  “Because you can fix the illness with medicine, but you can’t fix that.  Everything has been turned upside down.”
The parents who have attended Barretstown are in the process of setting up a support network for families.  Interested parties should contact Barretstown, Ballymore Eustace Co Kildare. 045 864115