Activities at St Thomas Care Home

Residents wanted to thank all the wonderful staff at the home, whose hard work and dedication make a real difference to the lives of those living in their care.

Carers Week is an annual event to raise awareness of caring, highlighting the challenges carers face, and recognising the contribution they make to our residents, families and communities throughout the UK. The theme for Carers Week this year is ‘Making caring visible and valued’ - to shine a light on all those who work tirelessly behind the scenes to care for vulnerable people in our communities.

Staff were treated to afternoon tea with delicious cakes, all the team received thank you cards and chocolates from Barchester

There were smiles and laughter and lots of eager people queuing up to take their turn as we kicked off our challenge at Barchester’s St Thomas care home in Basingstoke.

We started a seated exercise bike challenge as part of our physical exercise routine. Our aim is to cycle around the United Kingdom from our chairs. The bike is motorised so for residents who may not have the ability to push the pedals can still participate in the challenge. Every 5 minutes cycled will represent a town starting with Basingstoke and we will cover every town in Hampshire then move on to Berkshire, surrey, Oxfordshire and so on until we have visited every town and county in the united Kingdom. Staff are also taking up the challenge alongside the residents to motivate and encourage everyone to participate.

Residents we were delighted to spend time creating a beautiful floral masterpiece to enter the #BloomingBarchester competition in partnership with Blooming Haus following their amazing virtual flower arranging class.

We all had a wonderful time decorating and working on our flower displays. And are happy to say we were impressed with our skills in applying all the tips and ideas learnt during the class to create such beautiful and creative designs.

To celebrate world bee day residents enjoyed activities based on the topic of bees. We all had a wonderful time making these lovely orange and honey cupcakes. Everyone had so much fun making the honey bees to decorate their cakes and they tasted delicious!

We wanted to show appreciation for our nurses St Thomas to celebrate International Nurses Day and the birthday of Florence Nightingale, what better way than with gift and certificates for every nurse from Barchester Healthcare, it was a lovely celebration. 

Our Nurse Nirmala said “I have always been passionate about helping people and caring people around me, and I’m also interested in the medical side of nursing of to how the human body works. I enjoy building relationship with my residents here at St Thomas and providing the very best person centred care”.

On Saturday staff members and residents marked the anniversary of VE Day, also known as Victory in Europe Day, by organising a variety of special activities.

The home was specially decorated with flags and banners for the occasion, and at 11am everyone gathered together for a two minute silence as token of appreciation to the heroes of World War II.

In the afternoon, the residents were treated to a very traditional street party, complete with lunch boxes in the conservatory, and raised a glass to the nation, showing gratitude to “those who gave so much”. Music played in the background as residents enjoyed a really great ‘knees up’!