New Zealand children’s health camps: therapeutic landscapes meet the contract state

Abstract

This paper surveys the history and current status of children's health camps in New Zealand, and places these sites within the theoretical context of therapeutic landscapes. The ®rst health camp was established in 1919, and the seven current camps provide respite, education and health care for approximately 4000 children each year. We analyse the health-place relations inherent in the health camp concept and suggest that the`therapeutic landscape' idea developed by Gesler provides a useful framework to explain the development of camps as sites for enhancing child and family welfare. Speci®cally, we contend that changing understandings of health and children have been closely linked with changing perceptions of what is therapeutic about the camps. Survey data demonstrate that contemporary restructuring of the welfare state has recast the role of health camps and placed them in a precarious position in terms of both ®nancial viability and public acceptability. We conclude that the current status of health camps is ambiguous given the pressures of deinstitutionalisation philosophies and the regulatory environment of formal contracts between funders and providers. 7

Moving to a Continuing Care Retirement Community: Occupations in the Therapeutic Landscape Process

“…Gesler's empirical research into traditional therapeutic landscapes such as Bath, England and Lourdes, France (Gesler 1993(Gesler , 1996(Gesler , 1998 was followed by a collection on the topic (Williams 1999) that extended use of the concept to health care sites and marginalized groups. Work continued in that vein (e.g., Kearns and Collins 2000;Williams 2002;Milligan et al 2004;Conradson 2005;Wilton and DeVerteuil 2006), and authors within a more recent volume (Williams 2007) put forth an increasingly sophisticated, and sometimes critical, understanding of the role of therapeutic landscapes. Andrews (2004:308) argued that therapeutic landscapes is a concept that permits researchers to "embrace more cultured perspectives that view health places as complex and symbolic constructions."…”

Crossing roads, crossing boundaries: empowerment and participation in a child pedestrian safety initiative

“…Interestingly, the public school was not the only new institution prompted by this mentality. From the mid 19th century, a range of child-only facilities was established, including playgrounds (Gagen, 2000) and health care facilities (Kearns and Collins, 2000). While children's vulnerability was not conceived of primarily in terms of physical hazards, parallels can arguably be drawn with contemporary efforts by some schools to protect children from the dangers posed by traffic in their vicinity.…”

Therapeutic landscapes and wellbeing in later life: Impacts of blue and green spaces for older adults

“…Therapeutic landscapes include places such as spas, sacred sites, gardens, retreats, pilgrimage locations, homes, and health facilities (see Gesler (2009); Lea (2008); Conradson (2005); Williams (1998) ;Gesler (1992)). Scholars extended the concept to nontraditional healing landscapes, such as home settings (Williams, 2002), children's summer camps (Kearns and Collins, 2000), and collective gardening programs (Milligan et al, 2004). Thus, therapeutic landscapes encompass complex reciprocal relationships between a person and their broader socio-environmental setting (Conradson, 2005).…”