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
VE Day Celebrations
We had big plans for how we were going to celebrate VE Day, but due to social distancing, we had to re-think. Barchester’s life enrichment team is supplying us with all sorts of support materials while we cannot have entertainers, and we made good use of these on VE Day.
We read historical facts and emotional personal stories. There was poetry and songs to sing together: 'We’ll Meet aAain’ by Vera Lynn was sang with great gusto, while we waved our flags. We also joined in the nation's toast at 3pm whilst watching Churchill on television.
National Tea Day
We are always up for stopping for a cup of tea and a bit of cake at Kernow House, but were you aware that there is an actual day dedicated to drinking tea? How wonderful it was to find ourselves given a large box of different types of tea, biscuits and cold tea drinks by the National Tea Day company.
It was also Queen Elizabeth’s birthday. We know that the Queen chose not to celebrate her birthday this year, but it was also one of the resident's birthday, and if you can’t have your family visit you on your birthday, what is better than spending the day in royal company?
We set up afternoon tea trolleys decorated with Union Jacks and fresh beach leaves so everyone could enjoy a traditional afternoon tea.
Easter Celebrations
This is the cake we made with residents as our entry into Barchester’s Easter Cake Competition. We made it and promptly ate it. It was lovely!
We have held a little hymn singing service, had Easter quizzes, eaten hot cross buns and lots of Easter eggs. Unfortunately, we were unable to get lamb delivered for the roast lunch on Easter Sunday, but we have since had a delivery, so now we are looking forward to another delicious roast.
The weather has stayed lovely and sunny, so many residents have spent time outdoors watching the many rabbits we have around here and maybe wondering if one of them could be the Easter bunny.
The Great Outdoors
The sun has been shining and the rain has finally stopped, so we are taking advantage of the lovely weather by being outside in the gardens. On our Petherwin unit, we have moved some of the model animals to the quadrangle so they can be enjoyed by people choosing to be indoors, as well as those who sit outdoors. We have also found the leaf blower, so residents can do a little cleaning up outdoors – a much enjoyed spring pastime!
A Different World
Our everyday is very noticeably different and maybe a little quiet at the moment as we don’t have any visitors or entertainers. We no longer get together in large groups but we still make sure all residents do something that is meaningful to them. We have a tablet available so families can Skype, we have meals together, we use the Magic Table, we can go out in the gardens in the lovely sunshine and we hold our own hymn singing in small groups.
Kernow Kones will come around as often as possible and as always, we spend a lot of time eating cakes and enjoying other treats. Our community have been very supportive, sending messages to us. We quarantine any good wishes before passing them on to staff and residents just to be on the safe side.
Thank you to everyone who are supporting us to care for the residents at Kernow.
15 Years Working at Kernow
Staff are often celebrated at Kernow, either because they have been nominated and won Employee of the Month, as a ‘thank you’ for achieving something special or for Long Service. Anna Wojtas has worked as a carer at Kernow for 15 years and more recently as activity coordinator.
She was presented with a pin, a £250 Love2Shop voucher and a bottle of Prosecco by manager Gail Griffiths and was applauded by many of her colleagues. Well done Anna!
