What types of care does Hickathrift House Care Home offer?

Hickathrift House Care Home offers Residential care, Dementia care, Respite / Short stay.

Activities at Hickathrift House Care Home

Our teams are trained to enrich the lives of residents through stimulating the mind, body and soul, and taking the time to learn about each person to ensure everyone receives support that adds enrichment to their life.

We have two Activities Coordinators here at Hickathrift House. We have a wide range of activities within the home, including musical entertainment, arts & crafts, clubs for like-minded people, such as flower arranging and gardening, board games, baking (where the best bit is the eating afterwards!), and we celebrate special events throughout the year. We also have trips out on a regular basis using our own minibus, where we find out places of interest each person would like to visit.

It is important to us that each individual who we support can get as much from these activities as possible, so we try our best to arrange activities that reflect their interests and capabilities, and encourage them to participate in any way they can. We also encourage relatives to join in with activities and events as often as they can.

For the less mobile residents, we unique one-to-one session, such as simple chats over a cup of tea, reading or listening to music. Activities are some of the most important aspects of a care home, so it is essential that our team are dedicated to ensuring that residents are entertained, and that life at Hickathrift House is fun and active.

Watch our video on life enrichment in our homes.

Kat Colangelo

Activities Lead

Hello, my name is Kat and I am the Activities Lead here at Hickathrift House.

Since 2017 I have been working in the field of well-being and I am passionate and enthusiastic about enriching all our of residents' quality of life.

As the Activities Lead at Hickathrift House, my focus is learning about each of our resident's likes and dislikes and supporting them to remain receptive and active in addition to supporting them to engage with our local community friends.

I organise activities to stimulate the mind, body and soul in an enjoyable, comfortable way. My aim is to diversify and increase activities ensuring that there is something for everyone - from Wine and Cheese events, excursions on our home Mini Bus as well as individual bespoke person-centered activities.

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

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 Hickathrift House Care Home

Celebrating the Wildlife in Spring

Residents have been taking a moment to appreciate the stunning nature that surrounds our home. We’re so lucky to have such beautiful grounds at our home and be so close to the WWT Welney Wetlands, where wildlife thrives.

Residents, their loved ones, staff and our Duke of Edinburgh volunteer Olly had a wonderful afternoon in nature. At Welney Wetlands, we saw whooper and bewick swans begin migrating back to their breeding grounds, while residents at the home captured our wildlife visitors in the garden during a photography class and enjoyed a wildlife picture quiz.

Nature brings so much joy to the residents, and we’re always grateful for the peaceful moments spent outdoors.

Gentlemen's Club

The gentlemen at Hickathrift House enjoy getting together every month to share life stories, table games like dominoes and word games or quizzes. This month we loved watching horse racing on the TV while playing dominoes and hearing all about local gentleman Richard, and his career in dog agility.

Our Gentlemen’s club was created to combat loneliness in and outside the care home for men. Male residents in care homes are the minority and gentlemen in the community across the country can feel isolated at times. Therefore, it's such an important group to make people feel supported and help make good friendships.

St David's Day!

Residents had a fantastic time celebrating St David's Day! We reminisced with images of daffodils, Wales and learnt something new with Oomph Wellness activity booklets.

We also loved virtually travelling to Wales and shared memories from our holidays there. Of course, we had to add rugby to the day’s activities and loved keeping fit while tossing the ball around. Residents made delicious Welsh cakes in our Baking Club. They were just scrumptious thanks to Ollie, Margaret, Mike and Jane! To finish the celebrations, residents designed unique, beautiful decoupage daffodils. These are proudly on display for all to see or residents keep them if they wish.

Elsie said, "I loved chatting about my time in Wales and sharing all those memories with others. I really look forward to creating the decoupage crafts every month with Debs. They're beautiful".

Flag of the Fens

We were delighted to welcome James Bowman, creator of the Fens Flag, for an educational talk on the history of the flag and its direction to becoming the official flag of the Fens.

Residents and staff all gathered for James to share his knowledge on the Fens and his passion for the Fen’s Flag. The flag was first designed in 2016, with the colours royal blue, to represent the waterways, custard yellow to represent agricultural prosperity and the Fen tiger. The campaign to make the flag official began in 2018 and is supported by many local businesses who display the flag proudly. Residents were fascinated to learn more about their local area as well as the flag, with many asking questions as to where the flags are displayed and how to make it the official flag of the Fens.

Post a wish delivers!

Resident Betty, at Hickathrift House often shares stories of her career at the Duke’s Head Hotel in King’s Lynn and has always wanted to visit it after retiring, so staff at the home made her wish a reality through their ‘Post a Wish’ initiative proving the old adage, it’s never too late.

Hickathrift House ‘Post A Wish’ initiative helps residents complete their lifelong dreams, from going ice skating to meeting a pony. In 2024 the home successfully granted 30 wishes for residents and hopes to grant even more in 2025, Betty’s wish will make the 3rd wish granted this year.

Betty has lived at Hickathrift House for less than 6 months and is beloved by staff and residents alike. Staff at the home were delighted to be a part of making her dream come true, as they knew how much it meant to her, and they all wanted to be there to see the smile on Betty’s face when her dream was realised.

Valentine's Day Celebrations!

We have been busy celebrating this loved holiday, supporting the residents' minds, bodies and souls. Residents’ minds were stimulated by a famous couple quiz. We knew them all except the names of the bewitched couple until Ann came along to help. Residents’ physical wellbeing was supported through a love-themed party with live musicians.

The music had us all tapping our feet to the beat. Of course, we had to celebrate this holiday while remembering our loved ones and sharing photographs and memories of the residents’ wedding days, supporting their souls.