Activities at The Spires Care Home

Staff, residents and relatives at The Spires Care Home in Lichfield have taken part in a sponsored bake off and cake sale to raise money for Children in Need.

Taking place this year on Friday 17 November, Children in Need raises money to help support local charities and projects which are providing essential frontline help to children and young people in communities throughout the UK.  The activities team got their heads together and put the two things together that residents love the most which is baking and raising money for a good cause!

Staff and residents from Barchester’s The Spires care home, in Lichfield had a fantastic time visiting Barton Marina in Burton upon Trent where they all enjoyed a walk around the marina, a hot chocolate and slice of cake in the coffee shop and feeding the swans and cygnets.

Residents and staff had a brilliant time looking at the many boats that were on the marina and the wildlife surrounding it. They even enjoyed some window shopping and finished off their afternoon in one of the coffee shops which was overlooking the beautiful marina.

We welcomed ‘Strummer Time’ band into the home to play for us, Strummer Time got everyone singing and clapping along to the songs. Thank you very much for performing for us here at The Spires, the residents thoroughly enjoyed this.

We also had our weekly dementia book club where we took it in turns to read ‘The Race to Space’. We enjoyed reading the book with a hot drink and some biscuits before watching the first moon landing on the TV and having a discussion on the conspiracy theories.

This morning we watched a beautiful choral Eucharist service from Lichfield Cathedrals live stream.

In the afternoon we enjoyed the glorious weather on our sun terrace, played bingo (Colin was chuffed after choosing chocolate after eight mints as his prize), we cooled down during the day with choc ices and cool drinks. After our obligatory sing along we listened to our talented volunteer Alex play on our recently donated electronic keyboard.

Recently some of our residents have enjoyed a trip out to Humpty Dumpty’s pre-school for craft activities and story times surrounding Beatrix Potters 157th Birthday. The children were absolutely perfect and a joy to be around. Residents helped the children with crafts and reading Beatrix Potter stories. Intergenerational activities provide our residents and the children with the opportunity to interact and to enjoy being together!

The Spires recently presented Cherry Orchard Garden Services CIC with a cheque for £880 to purchase two new walk behind strimmers.  Cherry Orchard Garden Services offers work based learning for adults with learning disabilities and autism. The charity offers service users training in top quality gardening skills and then service users use these skills to support local elderly people to maintain their gardens in the Lichfield and Burntwood area. The grant had been awarded by Barchester’s Charitable Foundation, a charity that helps older people and adults with a disability or mental health problems across England, Scotland and Wales by offering grants to help people connect or re-connect with others in their local community.

The team at CoGs welcomes home manager Amy Doyle to tour their base and to see the fantastic work that they do. The team work with their service users to learn gardening and woodwork skills which then benefit the local community.