Activities at Harton Grange Care Home

We understand that the people we support have passions and interests that could be difficult to pursue after moving into a care home – but that doesn’t mean we don’t encourage them to try! Some hobbies can define a person, so our Activities Coordinators are dedicated to ensuring that everyone we support is able to do what makes them happy to the best of their abilities. Social events are organised with individual tastes in mind and with the idea that residents have the opportunity to try new and exciting things.

Enriching life
Watch our video on life enrichment in our homes.

Marius Sidoriuc

Activities Coordinator

Hi, my name is Marius, I am the activities coordinator here at Harton Grange. I joined Barchester's family in 2021, as I found their approach and standards on dementia very interesting. Since early 2022 I work for Barchester as both activities coordinator and care assistant. In 2018, I started my journey in health and social care as a care assistant and very soon after, I completed courses on dementia and activities (NAPA, level 2) and I worked as both activities coordinator and care assistant in Kent. I'm also an apprentice in health and social care. I've met some amazing people that have guided my understanding of dementia.

The most important thing for me is to see our residents achieving a meaningful raison d'etre, living as they like and to benefit from a range of activities starting from Namaste to reminiscing and spiritual needs (such as praying or listening to hymns), art and craft, armchair exercises, music therapy or finger nail pamper sessions.

I like to acknowledge that I am working as a part of a whole team, including the fantastic management, hospitality and maintenance departments, promoting a person centred approach for each resident and we are glad to know each persons preferences and abilities in order to plan how the day will look with them. One way we are able to do this is through our residents' and family' meetings where we try to let everyone have their say about the way they want to live and the activities they take part in.

Life-encriching activities booklet

Read our brochure 'Life-enriching activities' for more information about life in our care homes.
Read our brochure

Activities and Events Partnerships

As part of our bespoke life-enrichment programmes, we host a number of live virtual events in the home on a regular basis through a number of partnerships with places of interest and world class performance companies

Life at Harton Grange Care Home

Mindful colouring

At Harton Grange we enjoy being creative, we had a nice craft session just focusing on mindfulness and being in the moment which colouring in can bring, lovely bright colours and nice designs some classical music in the background, we had a lovely afternoon.

Halloween Cooking Demo

Residents had a lovely time joining Chef Alex Connell from Vegetarian for Life for a Halloween-inspired virtual cooking demo.

Alex demonstrated how to prepare a few themed dishes, such as root vegetable tagine, roasted butternut squash mac-n-cheese, chocolate pots with piped biscuits and flapjacks.

Our residents were delighted to be a part of this lovely virtual culinary session by tasting the vegetarian dishes from the comfort of our home.

Virtual talk with journalist and novelist, Mike Gayle

We had a great time joining journalist and novelist, Mike Gayle, for an intriguing virtual interview, during which he shared top tips for creative writing with our residents and read passages from his latest book, All the Lonely People.

We were thrilled to find out about Mike’s background, to understand what led him to become a writer and his creative process.

It was a lovely talk, enjoyed by all, especially by our keen writers at the home.

Virtual Cruise Experience at Harton Grange

We had a lovely time joining Paul Hawkins and Lisa Richards from Unilever for an exciting Virtual Cruise experience.

Our residents were welcomed with mocktails as Lisa and Paul took them on a magical journey to 3 mystery destinations, which were uncovered after a few clues.

Paul demonstrated how to create a few of the local traditional dishes, which our residents had the opportunity to try too.

The event evoked lots of great memories and it was truly enjoyed by all.

Musical afternoons

At Harton Grange we enjoy music and especially our ukulele singalongs, we all had an instrument and Nancy was really good and played the tambourine, Bill kept the rhythm as he was a piano player  for his local church, Olga and all the other residents really enjoyed the singing what a lovely morning we had.

Spending time in the garden

At Harton Grange we like to spend time in our lovely big garden, today we done the autumn clean up

We cleared all the pots and saved the autumn flowers, Jean really likes gardening and had a great day, Hilda done the watering and Annie and Freda enjoyed the beautiful sunshine, and to top it off we had plenty of hot tea and biscuits.