Long years of chronic stress from shelling, air raids and relocations exhaust children’s psyches, so summer vacation is a critically important rehabilitation for recovery. However, recent events surrounding Ukrainian children’s camps demonstrate a dangerous trend, when declared programs of health improvement and psychological rehabilitation turn into a source of additional traumatization for the children. Instead of the expected protection and professional support, they often find themselves in isolation from manifestations of aggression from peers or psychological pressure from the administration. The facts made public by parents indicate deep institutional gaps in the organization of children’s recreation, which require an immediate legal response and a revision of the criteria for the professional suitability of personnel.
Security crisis: systemic failures in health facilities in Truskavets and Vinnytsia
Organizational problems in the Truskavets camp “Artek-Prykarpattya”, which has been operating since 2021, became public after statements from concerned parents about systemic bullying and intimidation. The public catalyst for the discussion was the statement of Natalia Romanovskaya, whose 11-year-old son was at the facility under a free state program for children of combatants. After returning home, the boy provided video evidence in which a group of teenagers ignores his request to stop, pushes, pulls his clothes, and tears his T-shirt. During the shift, the child concealed the facts of the violence due to intimidation, which indicates an atmosphere of fear and lack of trust in the educators.
A similar experience is described by another mother, Kateryna Tymchyna, who was forced to pick up her 8-year-old son early due to regular aggression from other vacationers and the complete inaction of the administration in response to her appeal. Social networks have been filled with similar complaints from parents, indicating the return of children with visible bruises, injuries and signs of fright, potential overcrowding of living rooms, cohabitation of children of different age categories, as well as an inadequate level of medical supervision and violation of hygiene standards.
Although some of these organizational claims still remain without official confirmation, the scale of the complaints forced the management of the institution, where about 1.5 thousand children are simultaneously accommodated, to begin cooperation with the juvenile police. The administration plans to reinforce the preventive conversations of psychologist Olena Lebedenko, who states that the children have deep war traumas and interpersonal conflicts, with a radical step, namely the creation of a permanent 24-hour police station on the territory of the camp.
An equally disturbing precedent was recorded in Vinnytsia region, where a vacation at the English Dialogue Camp ended in a sharp conflict between the management and the family of 9-year-old Oleksandra. The girl’s mother, Nadiya Tishchenko, released audio recordings that indicate alleged psychological abuse and insults by the director Alla Lymar. According to the mother, the child was isolated, deprived of communication and subjected to severe emotional pressure, which began after the girl was not provided with timely medical care for a leg injury at a disco.
The list of violations recorded by the family, which they qualify as targeted bullying, includes public insults in the cafeteria, forced involvement in excursion programs against the girl’s will, discriminatory statements by the director regarding the status of her stepfather, who serves in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The consequence of this attitude was a medical certificate from a psychologist, which records the child’s signs of post-traumatic stress disorder and 32 points of anxiety on the SCARED-C scale.
However, the director of the camp denies the accusations, claiming that the recordings are edited, the situation was provoked by the mother’s hyper-care, and the phone was asked to be kept open only to broadcast the conversation to the parents. While the Vinnytsia region police are conducting an inspection and interviewing witnesses without opening criminal proceedings, the parents are demanding the return of 23,900 hryvnias for a two-week shift and the cancellation of the institution’s license, leaving the final decision to the results of the examination of audio materials.
Epidemic of bullying: why school bullying does not go on summer vacation
The problem of bullying and violence within the educational space of Ukraine demonstrates a steady trend of aggravation, as evidenced by the synchronous growth of official indicators of several specialized agencies at once. Conducting an institutional audit among domestic schools, the State Education Quality Service recorded a sharp surge in tension: if in 2024 complaints about bullying were received from only 15% of the inspected institutions, then by the end of 2025 this figure had almost doubled, reaching 28%. This unfortunate trend exposes a serious gap between the formal implementation of current instructions and their real impact on the safety of children. Despite the fact that paper plans to combat bullying have been developed and approved in almost every school, only about half of the administrations are engaged in real monitoring and analysis of the effectiveness of these measures, which turns prevention into a purely bureaucratic procedure.
At the same time, the Education Ombudsman Service continues to receive hundreds of alarming signals from parents and students, recording 168 specific complaints regarding violence, abuse, discrimination, and bullying in the educational environment as of June 2026. Each such story often turns out to be a complex knot of unresolved contradictions, as in one of the cases examined in detail by the department, where a child was subjected to systemic pressure directly from his own class teacher.
The situation was aggravated by humiliation and insults based on the student’s nationality, and later escalated into open physical violence committed by a classmate. The proper and timely response that should have come from the leadership of this educational institution to protect the victim never occurred, which only confirms the systemic institutional failures on the ground.
A similar vector of public anxiety is also being tracked through the prism of human rights institutions, as the Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine also reports a significant burden on its units. During 2025, this institution received 191 applications regarding bullying cases, which reflects the rapid growth of citizens’ interest in legal protection – this volume exceeded the indicators of the previous year by approximately 55%. The intensity of receipt of such reports does not subside even now, because in the first 5 months of 2026 alone, human rights activists received another 122 applications, which indicates the preservation of a high level of tension in the interpersonal relationships of minors.
The state system of response to such offenses also involves law enforcement agencies, which translate conflicts into the plane of legal liability using administrative instruments. During 2025, employees of the National Police of Ukraine documented the facts of bullying within the walls of educational institutions, drawing up 285 relevant protocols. The current statistics for 2026 demonstrate a certain movement towards stabilization or a slight decrease in the intensity of offenses: since the beginning of the year, police officers have drawn up 107 protocols, which is a slightly smaller result than for the same period last year. At the same time, the judicial branch of government demonstrates a high speed of processing these materials, since about 75% of the indicated police cases have already received their final decisions and have been considered in court sessions.
The movement of the adolescent contingent within the framework of seasonal migration shifts the focus of this problem, since with the onset of summer, the same students who formed destructive behavior models in the classrooms go on vacation to children’s camps. At the same time, the transfer of interpersonal conflicts and bullying practices beyond specific school walls transforms a local problem into a cross-cutting crisis of the out-of-school space. In a camp environment, the risks are exacerbated by the 24-hour cohabitation of minors and the specifics of new groups, where adolescents often try to assert themselves through aggression.
Currently, the administrations of recreation camps are faced with the same challenges that teachers in schools face, because the presence of safety rules does not guarantee their compliance if the administration does not have practical skills in anti-crisis monitoring and timely resolution of conflicts at the early stages.
The potential of children’s recreation: the camp as a space for healing, development and social integration
Despite the problems and individual precedents, summer recreation camps remain an element of education and recovery. At a time when the younger generation is facing unprecedented psychological pressure due to the war, well-organized institutions are transforming from entertainment locations into powerful centers of psycho-emotional support. They create a controlled, but at the same time free environment where a child can go beyond the usual family or school context and gain a unique experience of autonomous life.
Modern specialized camps are increasingly integrating elements of comprehensive rehabilitation into their programs aimed at overcoming acute and chronic psychological trauma. Professional teams of psychologists and teachers use gentle but effective methods that help children, including internally displaced persons and children of military personnel, adapt to new realities. Interaction with specially trained animals within the framework of canitherapy and hippotherapy effectively reduces cortisol levels, helps overcome barriers to communication and stabilizes the nervous system.
This effect is enhanced by art therapy practices, where clay modeling, drawing, theater productions and fairy tale therapy allow children to overcome hidden fears and experiences that are difficult for them to express verbally. The final element of daily psychological relief is thematic reflections around the campfire, where evening discussions among peers under the guidance of a teacher teach them to reflect, share experiences, and feel that they are not alone in their anxieties. Thanks to such a synergy of nature, a clear daily routine, and qualified support, children are able to ecologically work through the loss syndrome, reduce their anxiety, and restore a sense of basic security that is destroyed by external crisis factors.
The summer camp functions as a micromodel of society, where a child is forced to make independent decisions every day. Unlike classical academic education, the emphasis here is on the development of so-called flexible skills that determine the success of an individual in adulthood. Active participation in quests, sports competitions, or the development of camp projects teaches children teamwork and leadership, as they are forced to distribute roles, delegate responsibilities, and take responsibility for a common result.
Constantly being in a team also stimulates the development of emotional intelligence and empathy, as it encourages children to recognize other people’s emotions, seek compromises, and constructively resolve conflicts without aggression. In parallel, there is a natural development of domestic independence, when basic self-care skills, hygiene, and daily routines without parental control lay a solid foundation for personal discipline.
The modern format of a camp shift is far from outdated standards of passive recreation, as each program seeks to saturate the vacation with useful interactive content. Depending on the focus of the institution, children get the opportunity to try themselves in completely new areas of activity. Specialized camps offer intensive immersion in an English-speaking environment through communication with native speakers, as well as practical classes in robotics, programming, or media literacy.
At the same time, tourist and scout camps focus on physical development and applied survival skills, involving students in rock climbing, orienteering using a compass and map, providing first aid, and kayaking. Such dynamic leisure not only distracts teenagers from gadgets, but also helps them discover hidden talents, form stable interests, and find like-minded people, friendships with which often last for years.
The modern children’s camp has found itself at the intersection of two opposing realities. On the one hand, it has enormous educational and therapeutic potential, capable of supporting the child’s psyche in crisis conditions through entertainment activities and socialization. On the other hand, the statistics provided by law enforcement and human rights agencies record that destructive behavior patterns, school bullying, and institutional inaction automatically migrate into the recreational sphere along with “difficult” teenagers.
In essence, the summer camp was conceived as an institution that should entertain and develop children, providing them with quality leisure and psychological relief. However, practical precedents show that reality is often far from the declared standards. For some reason, there are increasingly frequent cases when parents are only presented with large bills for their stay, instead of providing quality services, guaranteeing basic safety and professional conflict resolution. Paper violence prevention plans, which formally exist in most institutions, do not work in advance, and the administrations are not ready for real crises.
A way out of this situation requires abandoning the bureaucratic approach in favor of practical changes. It is necessary to change approaches to assessing the professional suitability of personnel, implement effective anti-crisis monitoring systems, and strengthen the legal responsibility of the institution’s management. Without strict control over the quality of services and a shift in focus from commercial profit to child safety, summer vacation will remain an area of increased risk for children’s psyches.
