Activities at Lucerne House Care Home

Lucerne House has a very exciting announcement to make as in April we were the first Barchester Healthcare home, in the South West, to receive The Digital Rainbow - Care Home Table. Our residents and members of our team feel truly blessed to have been given hands on training from Karl, from The Digital Rainbow, on how to use all of the amazing features including music, sensory fun, cognitive challenges, reminiscence activities and more.  We have got straight into using our amazing new equipment the very next day. We began with some different games, including, bowling, word searches, who wants to be a millionaire and more.

Then, we took it around the home where residents were able to engage with activities and apps that they enjoy. Sheila was totally taken, being able to play Sudoku in her room. In the afternoon we had planned to have our regular countdown activity, but, with the use of the Care home table, we were able to play digitally, with the ability to have numbers rounds and the "crucial" countdown conundrum. The tables final interaction was in our Memory lane community where residents were able to watch football highlights of their favourite teams on YouTube, engage in sensory activities and we even got some karaoke going which saw residents, visitors and team members all singing songs by various artists. It's only been a day and we are already totally in love with it.

Congratulations to Senior Nurse, Rence Vhinyu on your 10 years of service at Barchester Healthcare.

Rence was presented with her long service award, flowers and chocolates by Sally Coletti, General Manager at Lucerne House.

We are all so proud of you and wish you many more years of service at Barchester. Rence strives to deliver outstanding nursing care and support to all of our residents living at Lucerne House and we are lucky to have her.

It's been an Easter to remember at Lucerne House with lots of fun to enjoy.

We started events with a trip to Alphington Village Hall & Community Centre for Chatterbox cafe. It was lovely to see so many families, friends and members of Alphington community, stopping by to indulge various treats and we hope you all enjoyed our baked efforts. Well done to all the volunteers for another fantastic experience.

Then, on Good Friday afternoon we were been tapping our feet and singing along with Colin and Ian from Sounds Easy at our Good Friday celebrations.

We had tasty hot cross buns and chocolate eggs to compliment proceedings which was finished with our Easter Raffle.

We had 4 prizes to win, 2x Easter gifts, a luxury Lindt Chocolate egg and the star prize, a Hotel Chocolat gift box, which was generously donated by Tracey, a relative of one of our residents.

Congratulations to all of our winners, Pete and Sue, Sheila, Linda and Viv. We hope you all enjoy your prizes and thank everyone for supporting the event.

There was more to enjoy for our residents and team members as Grace, Deputy Manager, visited each community to deliver Chocolate eggs to everyone which were enjoyed on Easter Sunday.

We have been keeping very active at Lucerne House.

A recent, typical day, saw us doing a variety of things. Whilst we had Lorraine Christopher, our wonderful hairdresser in the salon, we were also challenging our abilities at our weekly Countdown inspired word games. Our residents and staff love coming up with 7, 8 or even 9 letter words and we are so impressed with our residents amazing vocabularies and linguistic knowledge.

That afternoon, we were baking for our up and coming, News review club, starting the next day. To compliment the chat, laughter and news discussions, our residents will be able to enjoy, homemade scones, made by our residents and other refreshments.

Our cooking activities are a great way to maintain culinary skills and are always a great source of fun and laughter. We have already made plans to make Hot Cross buns, Simnel cake, baked goods for our local community and possibly more pasties, which are always gladly received.

To round out the day, that evening, residents, visitors and our team have all enjoyed a Chinese takeaway at our Social night. It was a delicious treat and our residents said it was great to get together again.

Our memory lane community was full of fun, fizz and laughter this afternoon at our Beer, Guinness and wine event.

All week, residents have been helping to make decorations and Guinness cakes which were all enjoyed this afternoon.

We tried our hand at an Irish names spelling quiz/drinking game and all raised our glasses to celebrate the day.

Thank you to everyone who joined us and for your support in making it all happen.

With Easter just around the corner it is time for Barchester Healthcare Easter Cake competition.

The event runs each year and sees homes from across the country competing against one another for the plaudits and even vouchers for the homes residents fund.

We are leased to present the entry, created by our residents, visitors and staff for this year.

We spent a morning baking the sponges and discussing our design. We even gathered some ideas for our upcoming Lucerne 70s festival on Friday 10th May.

Then, in the afternoon, we all regrouped in our Memory lane dining area and kitchen to finish the decorations. To add to the occasion, we also had various flavours of hot cross buns, including lemon and white chocolate, mixed berry and sticky toffee flavour to name a few.

Thank you to Sue, Sheila, Angie, Maureen and our residents for helping to finish the design. Our cake has the Easter bunny digging for carrots and Easter eggs surrounded by milk and white chocolate Kit-Kat fingers.

Well done to everyone who helped. We think you all did an amazing job and have our fingers crossed for the competition.