Activities at North Park Care Home

At North Park we encourage our residents to keep in touch with family, friends and community. Our residents look forward to the annual GOLD (Growing Older Living in Darlington) tea dance in the market square. Many of our residents have enjoyed this event over the years, some were volunteers and organisers.

Residents enjoy catching up with ‘old’ friends, chatting to the Mayor and having a tipple along with the fantastic entertainment provided. As resident Michael said “ I love this event, I always have fun and laughter is food for the soul”.

At North Park we strive to keep our residents connected with their community contacts, interests and friends. One of our residents’ past employment was as a Home Economic teacher, she transferred these skills to helping at the Oriental museum in Durham where her needlework skills were put to good use whenever any tapestries etc. required repairing.

Bobbie was ‘over the moon’ when we took a trip to the museum where she recalled many happy memories with other volunteers and the camaraderie that existed amongst them whilst undertaking such delicate work. Bobbie said “it has been such a lovely day full of memories, fun, laughter and learning”.

Staff and residents are celebrating because their wonderful Managing Director, Fiona Fagan, from Barchester’s North East and Scotland Division, has stepped completely out of her comfort zone to compete in the Barchester Charitable Foundation Cook Off 2024.

Fiona went head-to-head with the Managing Directors from Barchester’s four other divisions and cooked up a storm to raise a phenomenal £24,595 for Barchester’s Charitable Foundation which helps connect vulnerable people and those living with a disability to community groups in their local area by providing grants to improve mobility and quality of life.  Each year the Foundation distributes thousands of pounds to individuals, small community groups and charities across England, Scotland and Wales.  

Residents across our homes had a fantastic time exploring the Eden Project virtually - an educational charity and visitor attraction based in Cornwall, featuring sprawling outdoor gardens and breathtaking biomes that house the largest indoor rainforest in the world.

During the session, residents who joined were reconnected with nature through their senses, memories and stories.  A big thank you to the community team at the Eden Project for the wonderful event.

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