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
Our Amazing Dog Show!
We would like to say a huge thank you to all who attended our dog show on Saturday. It was a huge success with over 40 dogs in attendance, new visitors and relatives joined residents in our garden. Thank you to stall holders who supported us and our wonderful staff team. We are thrilled to announce we raised £250.29. We will be going and presenting the cheque to the RSPCA Stubbington Ark this week, who am I sure are very grateful to you all for raising an amazing amount.
National Youth Day with Royal Ballet
In celebrations on international youth day we enjoyed an amazing workshop from the English National Ballet and a performance from their young dancers. Our residents loved watching the dancing and getting moving unleashing their inner ballet dancer!
Breakfast Meeting was a great success
We all enjoyed our first Professional’s Breakfast of 2021 this morning!
Thanks to the safe and gradual easing of restrictions, we were delighted to welcome back Cllr Connie Hockley who first visited the home when it opened in September 2016 and new friends from the community including Dawn from Catisfield Village Association, plus Mary, Hayley, Sami and Nathan from the Complex Care Team.
Over a relaxed breakfast of pastries and bacon sandwiches we caught up on everyone’s news and upcoming engagements, so good to hear community groups are back meeting face to face with their members and our social diaries are getting busier!
Celebrating 2 winning members of our team!
Rachel Anderson and Myra Wadhams at The Fernes Care Home have been crowned winners for South Division in the Barchester Care Awards 2021 and are through to the national round of judging. Myra is our winner for 'Dementia Care Champion' and Rachel for her 'Community Engagement' contribution.
The Barchester Care Awards celebrate the staff who go the extra mile for the benefit of the 12,000 residents living in Barchester’s 248 care homes and private hospitals across the country. Categories range from ‘Registered Nurse of the Year’ and ‘Carer of the Year’ to ‘Activities Coordinator of the Year’.
More than 2,900 nominations were received from homes and hospitals across the UK. All entries were a very high standard and with winners in two categories everyone at The Fernes is over the moon to have Myra and Rachel beating hundreds of other nominees.
Saturday night entertainment!
Everyone was in love with Betsy’s beautiful voice as we all enjoyed Saturday entertainment here at The Fernes
Residents cheer on Eng-Er-Land!
Fans of the beautiful game at The Fernes were delighted to be able to watch this year’s fixtures after the disappointment of last year’s tournament having to be postponed. Residents and staff have been getting together to watch the matches and celebrate with a cold beer and footie-inspired bar snacks.
Resident, Ernie, commented: “What a brilliant match tonight, it was so wonderful to be able to watch it here with all my friends cheering on our boys – they did us proud! I think it really might be coming home!”
Cassie Munnoch, General Manager at the home, said: “We have loved watching the Euros, we have watched pretty much all the matches – lots of our residents are footie fans. It has been fantastic to be able to cheer on all the home sides and especially England – it makes all the difference when your side is winning!”
