The FernesBarchester Healthcare

Activities at The Fernes Care Home

Our teams are trained to enrich the lives of residents through stimulating the mind, body and soul, and taking the time to learn about each person to ensure everyone receives support that adds enrichment to their life.

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.

Read our brochure ‘Life-enriching activities’ for more information about life in our care homes.

Read our brochure

Gemma Woodford

Lead Activities Coordinator

I have been working in care for the majority of my work life, I started in domiciliary care and then made the move to The Fernes Care Home. I have progressed from Carer to Senior Carer and jumped at the opportunity to become the Activities Coordinator. I am outgoing and creative so find this role much more suited to me.

I enjoy planning all the fun and meaningful activities which are enriching the residents' lives. As I have worked my way up at the Fernes, I feel I know our residents very well and love to meet new faces, getting to know them and help them to meet new friends. Spending quality time with residents and seeing them relaxed, smiling and happy is the most rewarding part of the role.

Celebrating life at The Fernes Care Home

Zoolab visit!

Established in 1997, ZooLab is a family-run business which aims to educate audiences about animals and the natural world. They amaze, educate and inspire through our ethical and engaging animal encounters.

Our residents were educated and shown a variety of animals in our home. Most residents were brave enough to handle and see for themselves some different animals, such as Dexter the Snake! Sammy the Scorpion and Tilly the Tarantula.

They learnt many facts and had a fascinating afternoon and our Zoo Ranger was amazing. He adapted to meeting the differing needs of our residents and was knowledgeable and patient and engaged with everyone!

Something a little different for an afternoon at The Fernes!

Easter Garden

We had a wonderful workshop with Anna Chaplin from St Peter’s Church , along with Lynne who gave their time to come and create a Easter Garden with our residents at the start of Holy Week.

Not only did we get creative, we sang hymns and listened to some readings, discussing and listening to each other after. Anna also read a beautiful prayer to our residents and blessed our home.

“Creating Easter gardens for residents offers numerous benefits, including promoting engagement, sparking creativity, and encouraging social interaction.“

It's a meaningful way to connect with the Easter story, explore faith, and create lasting memories, so thank you, Anna and Lynne for gifting your time to our home.

Airfield Fun

Through using our ‘Getting to know Books’ and practicing person-centred activities, we focus on the interests and needs of the person.

With VE Day approaching we have been reminiscing about our residents memories and duties as young men. Naval, a Royal Marine Commando and a Pilot are just a few of our wonderful residents who have honoured our country with their services.

With interest in planes and learning more about the Military Era of our local Solent Airfield, we spent the morning watching Spitfires and other planes taking off. We also met with two Pilots from The Spitfire Academy who took great interest in our resident Pilots memories of learning to fly during National Service! It was a great conversation to listen to!

Our Gentleman really enjoyed our outing and are planning to come back again!

World Puppy Day

Yesterday we took full advantage of celebrating World Puppy Day, we have many residents here who have family pets and we welcome the lovely dogs in nearly every day!

Seeing a family dog in a care home can significantly boost residents' well-being, offering companionship, reducing social isolation, and potentially improving mental and physical health.

We also welcomed back puppies Dolly & Nola who visited us over Christmas and our residents fell in love all over again!

All dogs left after lots of cuddles and petting and a treat box from our dog station! 🐾

Garden Day

Beautiful afternoons spent in the garden!

As the sun has been shining and the days are lighter for longer we have been enjoying even more time out in the garden.

Residents enjoy sitting outside and socialising, walking together and counting their laps of the garden for daily exercise, helping with planting new flowers and taking down old planters, the trees are finally budding and more colour is popping within our grounds!

“Good friends are like springtime! A breath of fresh air!”

Portchester Castle Outing

Mini bus trip in the beautiful sun today!

We have enjoyed a lovely morning out enjoying the beautiful weather today! We decided to go to Ports down Hill to look at the views on such a lovely clear day, and our ladies reminisced about the local area as some of them have lived in the area previously.

We then moved on to Porch ester Castle and enjoyed a walk and tea/biscuits in the beautiful Church which one of our residents was married in.

What a beautiful day and lovely morning out with our wonderful residents!

Sunday Social Club

Sunday Social Group started in February! On Sunday mornings we now encourage our residents to join us in the ground floor dining room to have a social get together, no music , no games and no pressure just time to sit back and enjoy a cuppa with the other residents in their community here and get to know each other. After feedback from our residents not all wanted to join in with exercise or arts and crafts, it has proven already that new friendships have been made, the resident’s feel more about their new neighbours and also feel more confident to join in with other activities now they have new friendships.

Chair Exercises for Improved Stability

At The Fernes we are very fortunate to have a qualified exercise instructor on our Activities Team, Karen loves to work with the residents on improving their core stability to decrease their likelihood of falls.

Group Exercise is also fantastic for socialisation and just great fun.

Flower Arranging

In readiness for Spring ithe residents enjoyed some flower arranging. This is a great way to socialise and enjoy others company with tea and biscuits and beautiful flowers which we then display around our home.