Activities at Kernow House Care Home
Our Activities Coordinators organise varied and regular events. The activities that take place depend on what our residents tell us they are interested in and the feedback we get from their families. We currently have pop-up cafes where we socialise and maybe visit the hairdresser. We have regular live music events, a storyteller and visits from animals and we are often joined by families or friends during our social activities where they are always most welcome.
Living in Cornwall the surrounding countryside offers many beauty spots and we often have trips out to wherever our residents would like to go. At other times a walk to nearby shops or cafes is what we enjoy.
Louise is our hairdresser and she is with us twice a week. Louise also supports us during our weekly Namaste sessions where she offers hand massages in a relaxing environment. Every Thursday afternoon we have a time of worship supported by our local community. Our ice cream van, Kernow Kones, and our mobile pub, Kernow Keg, also make a weekly appearance. We have monthly clubs, when we play bingo or watch a film in our pop-up cinema. Residents on all units are invited to take part in a monthly Resident’s Meeting and they tell us what they would like.
Apart from these regular events, we also celebrate special occasions and often have musical entertainers to visit but we also make our own fun. All staff take part in fancy dress or charity events that we support and often what we do evolves through interaction between residents and care or activity staff. All this makes Kernow House a vibrant place to be where things happen both as group activities as well as on an individual level.
Bea Porup
Bea has many years of experience working in elderly care and both experience and training in dementia care. She has also worked extensively with people with Huntington's disease. Bea works closely with Sue, Jackie and our management team, nurses, carers and kitchen team to ensure our home has a vibrant environment with lots of events happening and varied opportunities for having both new and familiar experiences, making sure the people living here lead a rich and fulfilling life.
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 Kernow House Care Home
Father's Day
We celebrated Father’s Day with flowers and chocolates for everyone. We share them out so no one misses out on a little treat. Many fathers had Skype calls, telephone calls or cards and gifts from their loved ones. Later, everyone enjoyed a delicious lunch of roast turkey or salmon in a Mediterranean sauce, cooked by our kitchen team.
National Beer Day
We are finding all kinds of different events to celebrate. National Beer Day was one. We had lager, ale, shandy, lemonade, alcohol free beer and a few snacks. Sitting down together, having a pint and putting the world to rights is exactly what’s needed sometimes. National Beer Day is an annual event, but we will definitely repeat the day before next year.
National Biscuit Day
We never need an excuse for eating cake at Kernow, but when we realised there is an actual National Biscuit Day, we nearly jumped for joy. Biscuits were made by our chefs and distributed to everyone in the home. It was a good opportunity to sit down with residents, have a cup of tea and a biscuit or two while having a good natter. It’s just as it is in any family!
International Museum Day
We are lucky to have a loan box from Launceston Museum, so we got it out on International Museum Day and had a good look at the items in there. Fortunately, we are allowed to touch everything and the many textures reminded us of memories long forgotten.
The mechanical tortoise was very popular and it still works. For those who would like a more modern experience, we now have a tablet where we can log on to websites and take a virtual museum tour. It’s nice to have a choice of how to experience something like this.
When You Need a Cuddle
It can feel a little lonely when you can’t have your family around you and the staff have to distance socially. Thankfully, we now have a large quantity of empathy dolls and robotic companion cats, and they are very comforting to hold and cuddle.
We do not share them at the moment, but we have enough for those residents who need a little loving. The best of all is perhaps that they neither answer back nor do they scratch, even when you poke them in the eye.
VE Day Celebrations
We had big plans for how we were going to celebrate VE Day, but due to social distancing, we had to re-think. Barchester’s life enrichment team is supplying us with all sorts of support materials while we cannot have entertainers, and we made good use of these on VE Day.
We read historical facts and emotional personal stories. There was poetry and songs to sing together: 'We’ll Meet aAain’ by Vera Lynn was sang with great gusto, while we waved our flags. We also joined in the nation's toast at 3pm whilst watching Churchill on television.
