Activities at The Fernes Care Home
At The Fernes we endeavour to make our care as personal as possible, including when it comes to activities. We will give you a 'Getting to Know Me' booklet for you to fill out with your loved one before they arrive, which includes a little life history and a tick sheet for a vast amount of activities. This enables us to offer the activities we know they will enjoy and enables us to learn valuable information about their lives and what might stimulate them in conversations and trips.
Our specialist Activities and Lifestyle staff make sure there are always meaningful activities to take part in, such as helping in the garden, baking some bread to have with our dinner, and trips out to various locations nearby such as the beach and the garden centres. Residents are encouraged to take part, but it is always the resident’s choice to participate or not as we believe that having choice is very important to help our residents feel in control of their lives. There are activities on offer every day (and night for those night owls) in the form of word puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, arts and crafts, needle crafts and board games to name a few. We have entertainment that is organised at least twice a month such as Music for Health, Zoolab or musicians, and also have a wonderful Yoga instructor who comes every other week.
Activities are provided by everyone in our home from carers and specialised activities staff, right through to our admin team. If there is a task that needs doing and a resident would like to do it, such as sealing envelopes and putting stamps on or handing out popcorn for our Movie Mondays, they are very welcome to help out which enables us to give them a better feeling of purpose and self-worth.
We are a registered member of the National Activity Providers Association (NAPA), which means that we are always working to make the quality of life of all of our residents as high as possible by working with person-centred activities that aim to stimulate our residents, both mentally and physically.
Sophie Wasteney
Hi, I'm Sophie, I am the Activities Lead at The Fernes. I've worked in the care sector for 26 years and here at The Fernes for 3 of those. When I started here I worked in care so really got to know the residents, relatives and home very well. When the Activities Lead role arose I naturally jumped at the opportunity as it was one aspect of care I really wanted to do as I really enjoy making people happy. As you cannot put a price on a smile!
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 The Fernes Care Home
Dday Celebrations
For many of our residents this day is a big part of their history that is strong in their mind. A few of our residents remember the announcement from Churchill that the war was over and having a street party. Not many of us can really understand that feeling but we can use this day to show our appreciation and really understand what this generation have been through. We enjoyed an English afternoon tea sharing our memories, singing to war time tunes and hearing stories from our very own DDay veteran Bob. Bob was also lucky enough to attend the big celebrations in Southsea where he got to meet his majesty the King, Queen and the Prince. We also got 16 of our residents out to the local beach here on Hayling island to enjoy the static war time vehicles, dancing and of course a ice cream in the sun. Many residents said how wonderful the celebrations have been and has brought back so many hard but brilliant memories.
From seed to flower
Gardening club is always a big popular activity in our home. Yearly we hold a sun flower competition and this year is no different. A few weeks ago our residents chose their sun flower seed from yellow to orange or even a giant and planted them in a biodegradable pot and had them growing in our conservatory. One of our residents Colin has been in charge of keeping these watered and now they have sprouted it was time to get them planted in our courtyard so they can grow to their full potential. We got all our competitors in the courtyard to choose where they wanted their sun flower to be planted. Our head of maintenance Gary helped get their sunflowers firmly planted in their spot and we all cant wait to see how they grow.
Get Moving Week
We joined in Barchester ‘Get Moving’ campaign to raise money for our foundation. We had a whole week focused on getting residents, staff and our family and friends moving in all different ways. We incorporated a variety of activities from gardening, exercise class to dancing to some wonderful music. On the last day of the week we held a morning tea in which yourself and a resident went to do a lap of our wonderful gardens to enjoy the flowers in bloom, a little pit stop at the half way point to enjoy a refreshing beverage and some music to then enjoy a cup of tea and homemade piece of cake at the finish line! We helped Barchester to raise of £600 and with the sun shining vow to keep getting outside and moving all summer long.
Donkey Sanctuary
Who doesn’t love a donkey? We are so lucky to have a sanctuary on the island who homes over 30 retired or unwanted donkeys from all over and welcomes in everyone to come along to pet these wonderful creatures. We got together our furry loving residents to go along and get some animal therapy and enjoy a nice cup of tea and cake to finish of this wonderful day out. Meeting animals makes such a difference to our residents, it can be so calming to stroke these donkeys and everyone looks forward to the sanctuary opening up over the summer.
Memory Choir
Here at Wimborne we all love music and we like to sing each and every day! We wanted to create choir for everyone on the island and all our local communities to come and be a part of something we are so passionate about. In partnering up with the amazing Hampshire Memory Choir we had our opening session with the presence of our deputy Mayor of Havant who wanted to show his support in this wonderful experience for our whole community. We invited in everyone, those living with dementia or people who are supporting those with dementia to come along and see the difference music can make. Everyone sang songs with new friends and then enjoyed freshly made homemade cakes by our head chef. We already can’t wait for the next session.
Gardening Club
As spring is round the corner it is time to start up our gardening club. Our head of maintenance Gary runs our gardening club every year. Although it is still a bit chilly to get out in the garden we have spent the time planting seeds of different flowers and some vegetables to grow in our vegetable patch the favourite being carrots but for some of us something more exotic one of our residents is excited about the opportunity of growing some aubergine. We have been keeping them nice and watered and now we can see their growth we spent the morning planting them ready for them to sprout even more so they will be ready to get planted in the garden.
