Activities at Kernow House Care Home
Our Activities Coordinators organise varied and regular events. The activities that take place depend on what our residents tell us they are interested in and the feedback we get from their families. We currently have pop-up cafes where we socialise and maybe visit the hairdresser. We have regular live music events, a storyteller and visits from animals and we are often joined by families or friends during our social activities where they are always most welcome.
Living in Cornwall the surrounding countryside offers many beauty spots and we often have trips out to wherever our residents would like to go. At other times a walk to nearby shops or cafes is what we enjoy.
Louise is our hairdresser and she is with us twice a week. Louise also supports us during our weekly Namaste sessions where she offers hand massages in a relaxing environment. Every Thursday afternoon we have a time of worship supported by our local community. Our ice cream van, Kernow Kones, and our mobile pub, Kernow Keg, also make a weekly appearance. We have monthly clubs, when we play bingo or watch a film in our pop-up cinema. Residents on all units are invited to take part in a monthly Resident’s Meeting and they tell us what they would like.
Apart from these regular events, we also celebrate special occasions and often have musical entertainers to visit but we also make our own fun. All staff take part in fancy dress or charity events that we support and often what we do evolves through interaction between residents and care or activity staff. All this makes Kernow House a vibrant place to be where things happen both as group activities as well as on an individual level.
Bea Porup
Bea has many years of experience working in elderly care and both experience and training in dementia care. She has also worked extensively with people with Huntington's disease. Bea works closely with Sue, Jackie and our management team, nurses, carers and kitchen team to ensure our home has a vibrant environment with lots of events happening and varied opportunities for having both new and familiar experiences, making sure the people living here lead a rich and fulfilling life.
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 Kernow House Care Home
Nativity
Presenting Kernow Players and their performance of the Nativity. We had such a lot of fun doing our version of the nativity story, which was an interactive performance with residents, staff and students joining in. The story was beautifully narrated by a member of staff and the singing was led by a resident, who has a trained singing voice. Everyone joined in doing parts of their choice, so we had several angels and shepherds. It reminded us of going to nativity plays when we were young ourselves or going with our own children. A relative even suggested our performance reminded her of going to pantomimes. It was a lot of festive fun.
Taking part in community events
We have organised lots of Christmassy events for December and have listened carefully to what residents would like to do. One very popular event is taking part in the Festival of Christmas Trees and Cribs in St Marys Church. We made our own decorations using things we found outdoors and after setting up our tree with almost 80 other trees and displays, we have visited the church on numerous occasions. There is a fantastic atmosphere and it’s lovely to take part in a festive community event.
Remembrance Sunday Parade
We took part in the Remembrance Sunday parade in Launceston. The weather wasn’t kind but we went with two residents, who enjoy being outdoors in all weather and wore fleecy, waterproof ponchos to stay dry. There are service men and women amongst us at Kernow House. One of whom is our general manager, Leigh, who laid a poppy wreath at the War Memorial on behalf of all of us. We enjoy taking part in community events and appreciate when people from the local area say hello, especially when it is a handsome Captain.
Halloween Cake Competition
We watched a Live Event with Joy Whitlock, one of Barchester’s Hospitality Trainers, for an interactive demonstration decorating Halloween themed cupcakes and other sweet treats, and were inspired to make our own Halloween cake, so we could enter a competition. A group of witches, who are especially interested in cooking, decided to make a disgusting infected eye cake. Firstly, we made a sugar sponge, whisked by hand, so we could add some secret spells. When the sponge bases were cooked, we put them together with jam and cream before cutting out the eye shape. The cake was decorated with more cream, crushed bourbon biscuits and raspberry sauce with a little dab of custard. Quality control demanded, that we had to taste the offcuts and the cake was eye wateringly moist and creepily delicious. With all the cream and custard, we could easily make it suitable for the witches on soft diets too. We gave the eye cake to residents on Petherwin and best of all, we won Barchester’s Halloween Cake competition for our division
Percussion workshop
Drums4Fun CIC spent an afternoon with us and it was great fun.
This time Graham played more ballads and quieter songs, which we could sing along to and we played the instruments he brought for the percussion workshop. It is amazing to see the impact music and Grahams interaction has on all of us.
Nina, The Barn Owl
Nina, the beautiful barn owl, came to see us with Graham. Nina arrived in her box, which looks a little like a money safe. She is very precious and after she did the rounds several times, saying hello and letting us stroke her, she happily went back into her box. We really enjoy having animal visits and Graham is very good at telling us lots of things, we didn’t know. This time we learnt that the phrase ‘wise old owl’ is not strictly true as – due to their very large eyes – owls only have room for a very small brain. Every day is a school day, as the saying goes.
