NEW FREEDOM, Pa. - She calls him "Junior."

He calls her "My Little Spoiled Brat."

When big brother Daniel, 14, and his little sister, Michelle, 11, get together, they joke, tease and even roughhouse. However, unlike a lot of siblings, they rarely argue. Then again, Daniel and Michelle, who are both foster children in the care of different families, hardly ever see one another.

She lives in Baltimore and doesn't have his address.

He lives in Silver Spring and doesn't know her phone number.

But for one week out of the year, Daniel and Michelle rode horses, paddled boats and swam together. They swatted mosquitoes, drank gallons of purple bug juice and sang songs side by side. Last week for six days and five nights at this rambling Pennsylvania campground, they were at Camp Connect, which reunites about 60 Maryland foster children with their siblings each summer.

"We just like to talk to each other and have a good time," Michelle said one afternoon last week as she sat on the porch of the camp's rustic dining hall.

"I don't get to see her that often," said Daniel, who saved his allowance to buy his sister a brown teddy bear, which he gave her on Tuesday, the first day of camp.

Michelle looked at her brother and beamed. All week, she carried the teddy bear in her backpack - something that important just couldn't be left on her bunk all day.

Camp Connect, now in its second year, is the only camp of its kind for children in Maryland, according to Judith Schagrin, camp director and assistant director for child services in Baltimore County. The campers range in age from 8 to 20 and can't be identified by their full names for their protection. Because organizers were unable to find a suitable campground in Maryland, the camp is held at Summit Grove Christian Conference Center in York County, Pa.

Even if the campers can't live together year-round, getting them together for a week of camp helps strengthen family ties, Schagrin said.

"The memories will be with them forever," she said.

Just in case the campers need reminders of their visit, campers make pillows during the week to give to a sibling. It is a piece of themselves to take home, a reminder of their brother or sister from down the street or across town. Decorated with gaily colored suns and stars, the pillows contain messages that range from happy to heartbreaking. "Hey you are family to me," one pillow proclaimed. "I wish we were living in the same house," said another.

Not that camp is maudlin. The campers are kept too busy for much soul-searching. In fact, true sibling bonding - including bickering - often starts on the bus on the way to camp. "It's amazing how fast the mending of fences is," said Jim Rock, a Lutherville insurance salesman who took a week off from work to volunteer as head boys counselor.

But some siblings have their limits. William, an 18-year-old counselor, loves to call his younger brother and camper, Dayvon, "School Bus Head" to annoy him, but stops short of resorting to practical jokes on his brother or his three sisters at camp. "We're too much of a family for that," he said.

Thanks to a $35,000 Department of Humanities grant, none of the children pays to attend camp.

According to estimates provided by Casey Family Programs in Washington, between 25 percent and 75 percent of siblings nationally are separated in their foster home placement. The larger the family, the more likely the children are placed in separate foster homes, experts say.

In Maryland, nearly one-third of the state's 11,493 children in foster care live with at least one of their siblings, according to the Maryland Department of Human Services.

Children are separated for a variety of reasons, Schagrin said. Sometimes foster homes don't have the resources to take all of the siblings in a family. Some siblings are separated because one child may have an emotional or physical problem that their sibling does not. Or siblings are placed in different homes because their behavior is destructive when they are together.

"Loss of siblings is a real bereavement for many children in the child welfare system" said Caroline L. Burry, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. "In fact ... research with adult adoptees has found that they are searching for siblings from whom they were separated in childhood at least as often as they are searching for their birth parents."

When Latrese, 9, was reunited with her sister Kimberleigh, 20, at camp, she burst into tears. Since then, she followed her older sister around just about everywhere. Walking from the pool back to their bunks one morning earlier this week, Latrese reached down and grabbed her older sister's hand - as if she just wanted to make sure Kimberleigh was real.

Camp Connect was inspired by Camp To Belong, an Englewood, Colo.-based camp for foster siblings started in 1995 by Lynn Price, a former telecommunications executive. Price was an 8-year-old in foster care when she discovered she had a sister living across town. Price didn't really come to have a relationship with her sister until they were young adults and so she started the camp as a way for siblings in foster care to get to know each other while they were growing up.

Camp To Belong has grown from a single site in Las Vegas with 32 campers to three sites with several hundred campers. To date, Camp To Belong has reunited more than 700 siblings from across the country. Other states, including New Jersey, Florida and Ohio, have started similar programs of their own, and Camp To Belong hopes to expand its program to seven states next summer.

When Camp Connect ended Sunday, Daniel and Michelle returned to their separate homes. They don't know when they'll see each other again, but they are already making plans for camp next summer.

"I'm going to bring walkie-talkies so we can talk even when we're in our bunks," he said. "I'll need lots of batteries."