Meet our Activities Coordinator, Gitana Norvaisiene

Gitana Norvaisiene is our Life Enrichment Coordinator. She oversees and organises all social activities within the home. Although Gitana only recently took up the Coordinators role she was previously a carer at Lynde House. Within her first year she was honoured with being shortlisted at the National Barchester Awards in the category of Activities Coordinator of the year and also won with her team of residents and local school pupils the Barchester In Bloom best Flower display

Activities at Lynde House

Our Activities Coordinators get a real buzz off their work here as enthusiasm is essential for the role. We decorate and celebrate for all the big annual events, Valentine's Day, Easter, Mothering Sunday and much more. There are also regular fixtures in our activities programme, including bingo, a sherry morning and quizzes, that are always well-attended. There's also an International Day that we hold to celebrate the wonderful ethnic diversity of our staff, where members of our team and their families give up their time to showcase their national costumes, dances and songs. Of course, we also have activities and services tailored to those residents who prefer the quiet life, such manicures or simply a friendly chat and a cup of tea. We always do our best to learn about residents' hobbies and interests and try to arrange our activities programme around their individual likes and dislikes.

Life at Lynde House Care Home

Our Facebook page is now live!

We are excited to be posting news, events and photos on our new Facebook page from today - please do follow, like and share our posts with your friends and relatives. Find us @barchesterlyndehouse

The early morning sunshine today in our garden made everything look calm and peaceful, what a lovely safe place to be

Connecting the old and young to shine 'Brighter Together'

Lynde House residents were delighted to be chosen to take part in a project with Twickenham Park Day Nursery earlier in the year when the children visited a group of residents on a regular basis. The pilot, run by Polly van Marken from Brighter Together, has now produced a report on the outcomes and it make very positive statements about the experience for both children and residents.

On average residents experienced a 30% increase in ‘feeling loved’ after just 12 weeks of the sessions with John, a care home resident saying: ‘it is the sunshine in my week’.

We will be continuing the project, which now has charitable status, later in September with sessions on ‘zoom’ and adapting the format for more games both groups can play although not physically together.

Watch this space for news – residents and the team are really looking forward to seeing the children again

Short back and sides!

We all missed our regular visits to the hairdressers and barbers to keep us looking lovely, residents had the advantage of the 'in house' salon and our care staff to keep them looking glamorous - Roy's daughter was visiting today and he wanted to look his best

We held our very own 'Carnival'

Residents and staff spend many hours and much effort making their own hats and costumes for our very own version of the Notting Hill carnival - a great time was had by all!

Embracing the new technology!

Residents and relatives have been really enjoying garden visit for weeks now, initially we supported residents with Skype calls and stopped counting when we reached over 600 calls by August! It’s been amazing how residents have embraced the new technology to keep in touch, letters and cards have been very welcome too.

We have continued with our relative meetings to keep everyone informed on what’s going on in the home – at our second ‘virtual’ meeting in August we had nearly 30 join us on Zoom, far more than would normally join us at a face to face meeting even with tea and homemade cake on offer.

From Australia to Dublin and not forgetting other parts of the UK like Scotland it was great to have questions and feedback from relatives who would not usually be able to attend. Thank you to everyone who joined us, we will certainly be looking to continue to keep this channel of communication open in the future.

Our Facebook page is now live and we will be posting regularly to keep you up to date with life in our home, upcoming events and lots of photos – follow us at @barchester.lyndehouse and please do feel free to share with family and friends