Activities at North Park Care Home

North Park Resident, Billy enjoyed his 80th birthday with a super party attended by his friends and staff from North Park. Billy who was an avid pigeon fancier, and won lots of races when he flew from East End Club, enjoyed an afternoon of music, dancing and singing and enjoyed blowing the candles out on his cake decorated as a pigeon carrier with three pigeons peeking out.

Billy was over the moon when his cake was handed round and everyone in attendance toasted him and sang for he’s a jolly good fellow. Pictures were forwarded to Billy’s family who were able to join some of the celebrations via video call.

Residents, Rita and Maureen regularly help the laundry assistants with their duties, Rita loves sorting and pairing the socks whilst Maureen is a dab hand at folding anything from scarfs to bed bedsheets. Both ladies look forward to these daily tasks as Maureen said “it is good to feel productive and to know we are able to help around the home

Residents at North Park Care Home, in Darlington are enjoying Sunday afternoon story time with 10 year old Chloe Chapman, who treats the Residents to two hours of interactive storytelling and chat. Chloe is a pupil at Mount Pleasant Primary School and started the sessions five weeks ago and they have meant such a lot to the residents as their families are unable to visit the home at this time due to local lock-downs.

Lisa Frame, acting General Manager at North Park Care Home said: “In these unprecedented times, ensuring residents feel engaged and connected within our local community is more important than ever. Our residents really enjoy engaging with and listening to Chloe’s stories. We provide a wide range of physical, mental and spiritual activities at North Park Care Home as part of the life enrichment programme for residents, and this one proving very popular! We have also adapted ways to keep residents active, whilst ensuring that the group activities are smaller, adhering to social distancing advice”

Residents of North Park showed their creative sides as they enjoyed making salt dough fruit and vegetables as they make a display for Harvest Festival. Residents enjoyed kneading the dough liking it to how they would knead mixture when making bread.

Residents then moulded the dough into shapes to be dried and decorated at a later date. After the interactive activity Mavis said that although she had always enjoyed baking she had always shied away from joining in arts and crafts as she thought she was “past all that”, however would be joining in more as it had been a really fun morning!

Staff at North Park thought it would be a nice idea to mark the return to school for children in England this week. Residents have been able to chat over the phone and skype with their grandchildren and great grandchildren every day for the past six months whilst the schools have been closed, and we know our residents will miss this connection until the next school holidays.

Members of staff came to work in what can only be describes as an assortment of uniforms’,  ‘pigtails’ and ‘freckled’ faces to celebrate the occasion.

Residents enjoyed jokes which had been sent in by Primary School aged children, school quizzes and reminisced about their days at school. Of course memories of ‘The Nitty Nurse’ visit brought groans as did the PE lessons in the school yard. Doreen said it had been such an enjoyable morning with Jessie adding “oh this has brought back so many happy memories, it’s been great”  

There is always plenty of fresh fruit for residents to enjoy throughout the day and Residents of North Park look their fruity Friday morning breakfasts. Along with the daily breakfast menu Friday is fast becoming known as Fruity Friday when the homes hospitality team prepare platters of delicious seasonal fresh fruit for residents to enjoy.

Residents are very much enjoying sampling the different tastes and textures while enjoying a leisurely  chats with their dining companions in their social bubbles.