BEAVER COUNTY, Pa. — Officials at the Beaver County YMCA are making changes after a mother says her 11-year-old daughter was allowed to walk away from a summer camp on Monday despite a signed form that allowed her child to be released only to her.
"My youngest daughter called me, concerned about her older sister,” Tracy Hughes said. "My oldest daughter left a YMCA program that she had no authorization to leave from.”
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Her two daughters were at a camp run by the Beaver County YMCA Monday at Ellport Community Park in Ellwood City.
Hughes said she signed a form forbidding her daughters to leave the camp on their own, but she learned that her eldest daughter had left with a group of children who asked to leave to go to one of the girls’ homes.
“The one young man said he assumed that because my daughter was 11 that she knew she wasn't allowed to leave, and I said, ‘You never tried to pull anything when you (were) 11 and 12 years old?’” Hughes said.
Mike Harich, president and CEO of the Beaver County YMCA, told Channel 11 News that the organization has made quick changes to keep children safe, including the termination of the employee who allowed Hughes’ daughter to leave.
Harich said organization leaders have met with all the counselors countywide at the Beaver County YMCA’s 25 playground sites and 38 lunch sites.
Another change now requires all children in the organization’s programs to wear armbands. One color is for children who walk and are allowed to leave on their own, and another color is for children who can leave only with their parents.
The new policy is one that Hughes said she was hoping to see. She called the changes “a big relief.”
“(I’m) just concerned for everybody's safety,” she said.
Hughes said she thinks that the camp program is wonderful and her children really enjoy it. She said she might consider letting them return now that she knows more security measures are in place.