Activities at Cheshire Grange Care Home

Remembrance Sunday is always a special day on the Cheshire Grange calendar, where we normally invite standard bearers and a bugler form The Thelwall British Legion to take the service for us, but this year due to Covid 19 restrictions it had to be somewhat different. As always we took in to consideration the residents views, many not wishing to talk in any great detail about that time in history, not wanting to remember the tragedy it brought, but wanting to pay their respects. We created a display in the lounge area with knitted poppies donated by a local art group for which staff gave donations to The Royal British Legion, we also supported the group by placing a Virtual memorial in The 2020 Field of Remembrance, residents helped by making tissue paper poppies which were placed around the home.

On the day small groups from all communities gathered in the lounges to watch the service from the Cenotaph followed by Songs Of Praise, those who chose to stay in the rooms watched on their own TVs.  In the afternoon all residents who wished to, got the opportunity to watch a specially made Remembrance Day Musical DVD made by one of our favourite singer Deborah who was a regular visitor before lockdown restriction.

We spent a week in October celebrating Harvest Festival, we had craft sessions decorating pumpkins, poetry afternoons where we made our leaf fall poem, we also made salt dough ‘bread’ and a wheatsheaf. Alexa helped us out during these sessions playing harvest song requests, the most popular being Morning Has Broken , We Plough The Fields & Scatter and All Things Bright & Beautiful.

We involved  families by asking them to send us harvest related words in to put on our tumbling apples and connected to our local community being having a collection for the food bank. All this industry was put together in a bright colourful display for all to enjoy. The part of the week residents enjoyed best though, was the chatting and reminiscing about their memories of harvest time, as children themselves and with their children.

It was rainy and miserable outdoors so out came the cards & dominoes. We soon discovered that rules were very flexible and that most residents when playing with their families had made up a lot of their own rules. We all admired our ‘domino’ snake, which might not have been totally numerically sequenced, but we were strict when it came to Snap and this saw one of our gentle not win a trick, but we reassured him with the old adage ‘unlucky at card, lucky in love’ ….to which he declared, with a wry grin ‘ well I’ll take that!

Residents at Cheshire Grange Care Home, Lymm have taken part in a virtual Trans Pennie Walk, to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Society.

Over a period of 2 weeks, when weather permitted residents and staff walked laps around the homes meadow path, with the distance walked mapped on the Trans Pennie route, starting from Heatley the total distance walked of just over 9 miles, took the Cheshire Grange team to Penketh whilst raising funds for the Alzheimer’s Society.

Jo Eland, Activities Coordinator said ‘”This has been a very interactive challenge for residents and staff, as the trail runs past our door and some residents were familiar with it, it also triggered many interesting conversations about the various local landmarks we reached. It was a lot of fun and good exercise involving as many of our ladies and gents as possible as well as supporting a very worthy cause.

Since ‘lock down’ a lot of focus has been put on maintaining contact with loved ones who can no longer visit, and now that local restrictions are once more in place and we’ve had to suspend garden visits, this has become more important than ever, especially with new residents coming into the home.

These calls are a big part of the daily routine now, but have given our ladies and gents lots of individual attention and we have learnt so much from this special time and family conversation, we’ve all wept tears of sadness and laughed with tears of joy. Residents have got to grips with WhatsApp calls, Portals, FaceTime and a KOMP.

We’ve sent photos & videos via email and text and WhatsApp, shared special occasions birthdays and Wedding Anniversaries using modern technology,  we’ve sent Miss You Hearts out to all our families along with postcards and letters, keeping in touch and saying I Love You has almost become our home moto.

Reminiscence is very important for everyone here at Cheshire Grange, it helps the care staff to learn about the residents and gives the residents triggers to their past. We have enjoyed sharing holiday and pet photos on our Memory Lane Communities this month and have had lots of interesting conversations after residents have been looking at our photo frames.