Barretstown is a not-for-profit camp for children with cancer and other serious illnesses located at Barretstown Castle, Ballymore Eustace, County Kildare, in Ireland. It was founded in 1994 by Hollywood actor Paul Newman and is a member of the SeriousFun Children's Network of camps across the world.^[1]

The children attending, aged from seven to seventeen, come from Ireland and more than twenty other European countries to take part in activities the camp provides such as arts and crafts, canoeing and outdoor adventure. After successfully overcoming the initial challenge of these activities, the camp says that children stop seeing themselves as 'sick kids' and begin to regain their own inner strength, confidence and self-esteem through therapeutic recreation.^[2]

While hospitals are intended to take care of the physical aspects of serious illness in a child, Barretstown plays a vital role in healing the effects of emotional scars.^[3]

Barretstown is a non-profit charitable organisation and provides its services free of charge to all of the children that attend the camps. To do this, they raise €8 million annually to cover their costs.^[9] The majority of the money comes from voluntary sources including individual donors, events and corporate supporters. One example of their fundraising efforts is the annual "Big Picnic for Barretstown" which is supported by Avonmore.^[10] They also have a number of large corporate supporters including GlaxoSmithKline and Glanbia.^{[citation needed]}

Many of the participants in the annual Dublin Marathon, which takes place on the last Monday in October each year take part in aid of Barretstown as it is one of the marathon's two designated charities, along with Special Olympics Ireland.^{[citation needed]}

Barretstown, like most non-profit organisations, relies on volunteers in order to run its camps. They require over 1200 volunteers annually to help in the provision of camp services.^[11] A volunteer in Barretstown is known as a cara, which is the Irish word for 'friend'.^[12] The 'caras' play a key role in supporting and encouraging the children to participate in the various activities in the camp.