Activities at North Park Care Home

A Lead Senior Care Assistant at our home has received a prestigious twenty-year service award in celebration of working at Barchester Healthcare for twenty years. Juliette Florendo, started at Barchester in June 2004 and has worked with residents and their relatives to ensure that their needs have been met over the years.

Lisa Frame, General Manager said: “We’re delighted to be celebrating twenty years of loyal service with Juliette. She has demonstrated her dedication and loyalty to this home and its residents year after year. I speak for all of us here at North Park Care Centre when I say that I’m looking forward to many more years of working with Juliette.”

Our cooking club really enjoy getting together to discuss ideas and recipes then to put their skills to practice, and with National Sausage Roll Day that is what they set about doing.

Using their favourite Be-Ro book, the 17th edition published in 1954, they made the ruff-puff pastry using lard and plane flower before adding flavours to pork sausage meat. Three flavours were chosen pork, onion and mustard, pork and chilli and pork and black pudding.

Dee said she never was keen on baking before but was really enjoying it now adding the best part was of course eating the creations. Bobbie who had been a Home Economics Teacher is going to lead the next session where they will be concocting sauces and dips for our BBQ

Residents across our services enjoyed a fantastic virtual tour of The Deep, an award-winning aquarium in Hull.

Our residents dived into the underwater world of some fascinating creatures such as sharks, turtles and stingrays.

It was a truly immersive and educational experience that brought the wonders of the ocean right to our screens.

Resident Pat has always, from a little girl, enjoyed playing dominoes. Earlier this year she said she wished we (North Park) had a domino team. After a couple of false starts we found we had some like minded people who enjoyed a weekly match.

At one of these domino afternoons Pat said it would be lovely if we could run a domino handicap with other homes. This was a fantastic opportunity to reach out to our sister homes to see if any would be interested.

The first inter-home domino handicap was a huge success there was lots of fun, laughter and a friendly competitive atmosphere. Pat was over the moon and said it had been one of the best mornings she’d had since coming to North Park.

From the feedback from all concerned we have agreed to make this a monthly event visiting each others homes.

Staff and residents took part in a fundraising waxing to raise money for Darlington under 9’s Football team new seasons strip. General Manager, Lisa Frame challenged the homes male colleagues to have a part of their body waxed by residents, staff and friends to ensure we reach our target of £600. Everyone was very supportive and were there to cheer on the participants as they began the fundraising challenge.

Ben Patterson Implementation Lead at Barchester said “I loved my time at North Park Care Centre, so taking part in this challenge with old friends was a must. It was been a huge amount of fun watching everyone squirm until it came to my turn…” Steve Hagan Lead Maintenance Manager said “It’s for such a great cause. I’m very glad to be able to do my bit to raise as much as possible for this worthy cause.”

Here at North Park we enjoy a wide range of activities tailored to groups as well as the individual.

Our residents on Memory Lane enjoy multi-sensory activities one of their favourites being fruit tasting. we also incorporate this with life skills washing, chopping and preparing before turning it into smoothies, moose’s or ice-creams. For a change we utilized the Oomph fruit quiz and mirrored the fruits in the quiz with the same from the kitchen. Residents then looked through the pictures, using their sense of sight guessed the fruit. Residents were then able to touch, taste and smell the fruits while talking to each other about their favourite.