When you enroll your children in day camp, you expect it to be well supervised and cared for, but the mother of a seven-year-old girl had a much worse experience on Wednesday. She left the sick child unattended until her mother came to pick her up.
Carol-Anne Trottier received a call from camp Wednesday morning to advise her daughter was not feeling well. The girl said headache, chest pain, stomach pain. Fifteen minutes later, her mother arrived at Charles-Gravel High School to pick her up.
But when she arrived no one welcomed her. The young mother goes to a room where she hears crying and finds her daughter alone, in a small room with ice and a bottle of water.
“She was boiling with a fever,” Carol-Anne Trottier said. Her cheeks flushed. You can see she’s not really “feeling it”. I thought they had left her there. She is seven years old, alone, without supervision, with temperature and fever to monitor her health. I was worried,” she said.
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Carol-Anne Trottier tried unsuccessfully to find a responsible adult.
“I left and no one knew she was gone and no one called me to make sure she was okay with me,” the mother added.
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A complaint was filed in Chagune. A follow-up with Mom was quickly done. The city’s day camp manager contacted her.
“She took it very seriously and told me there were things that could be strengthened,” noted Carol-Ann Trottier.
However, the mother admits she has lost confidence and wants to wait for the dust to settle before her daughter returns to camp.
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“I’m angry at the organization because I trusted them, I entrusted them with the most precious thing in the world to me, and I feel guilty because I had no choice but to send my child to day camp,” she said.
“I saw the carelessness of an instructor who was supposed to be training,” she continued. “I know they’re doing their best, they’re young. But they’re kids and shouldn’t be taken for granted.
The city confirms that it is taking the situation seriously and promises to send a reminder to its day camp teams to prevent a similar incident from happening again.
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