Allison Crooks
Experience Camps Clinical Director
National (Maine, Michigan, Georgia, California)
My name is Allison Crooks (she/her) and I am a licensed marriage and family therapist based in Los Angeles, CA. I am also a clinical director with a wonderful non-profit called Experience Camps. We offer a free, weeklong sleep-away camp for children and teens (ages 9-17) who have experienced the death of a parent, primary caregiver, or sibling. Our goal is to provide grieving kids with all of the fun and excitement that a typical summer camp has to offer, while weaving in opportunities for meaningful, clinically-informed grief work. We want our camp to be a space where grieving kids can learn how to express and process their grief, while experiencing the sense of belonging and community they need. I am attending this symposium to learn more about how we can best support our trans, non-binary, and genderqueer campers and to better inform the structural and cultural changes we are making in an effort to create a proactively inclusive and truly supportive camp environment.