Activities at The Fernes Care Home
At The Fernes we endeavour to make our care as personal as possible, including when it comes to activities. We will give you a 'Getting to Know Me' booklet for you to fill out with your loved one before they arrive, which includes a little life history and a tick sheet for a vast amount of activities. This enables us to offer the activities we know they will enjoy and enables us to learn valuable information about their lives and what might stimulate them in conversations and trips.
Our specialist Activities and Lifestyle staff make sure there are always meaningful activities to take part in, such as helping in the garden, baking some bread to have with our dinner, and trips out to various locations nearby such as the beach and the garden centres. Residents are encouraged to take part, but it is always the resident’s choice to participate or not as we believe that having choice is very important to help our residents feel in control of their lives. There are activities on offer every day (and night for those night owls) in the form of word puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, arts and crafts, needle crafts and board games to name a few. We have entertainment that is organised at least twice a month such as Music for Health, Zoolab or musicians, and also have a wonderful Yoga instructor who comes every other week.
Activities are provided by everyone in our home from carers and specialised activities staff, right through to our admin team. If there is a task that needs doing and a resident would like to do it, such as sealing envelopes and putting stamps on or handing out popcorn for our Movie Mondays, they are very welcome to help out which enables us to give them a better feeling of purpose and self-worth.
We are a registered member of the National Activity Providers Association (NAPA), which means that we are always working to make the quality of life of all of our residents as high as possible by working with person-centred activities that aim to stimulate our residents, both mentally and physically.
Sophie Wasteney
Hi, I'm Sophie, I am the Activities Lead at The Fernes. I've worked in the care sector for 26 years and here at The Fernes for 3 of those. When I started here I worked in care so really got to know the residents, relatives and home very well. When the Activities Lead role arose I naturally jumped at the opportunity as it was one aspect of care I really wanted to do as I really enjoy making people happy. As you cannot put a price on a smile!
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 The Fernes Care Home
Gardening Club
As spring is round the corner it is time to start up our gardening club. Our head of maintenance Gary runs our gardening club every year. Although it is still a bit chilly to get out in the garden we have spent the time planting seeds of different flowers and some vegetables to grow in our vegetable patch the favourite being carrots but for some of us something more exotic one of our residents is excited about the opportunity of growing some aubergine. We have been keeping them nice and watered and now we can see their growth we spent the morning planting them ready for them to sprout even more so they will be ready to get planted in the garden.
Balloon Badminton
Daily exercise comes in all different ways here at Wimborne care home and the weekly favourite is definitely our balloon badminton sessions. This session was inspired by our oldest resident Ivy why has played badminton since she was 14 and has always wanted to start it up again so we decided to swap the shuttlecock for a balloon and get everyone together in our lounge to join in a always competitive game or two. The lounge is always full of laughter and wouldn’t know we are doing our daily exercises.
Ukes of Wallington
Here at Wimborne music makes us all happy so throughout the year we are lucky to have many different performers come in and take us through our favourite songs. This month we were honoured to have for the first time the talented group the Ukes of Wallington. Coming all the way from Fareham they came with their ukuleles ready to show our home, our friends and family the best afternoon. Everyone’s favourite songs were George Formby’s specials that had everyone singing along. Half way through we enjoyed a homemade slice of black forest gateau and the chef famous scones with clotted cream and jam. We already can’t wait for the return of this wonderful group.
Donating to our local Food Bank
The Fernes recently presented Waypoint Hub/Fareham Foodbank with a basket full of food which had been donated by residents family’s and staff.
Penny from Waypoint Hub, said “we would like to thank everyone who has donated”.
The Fernes has built up excellent reputations within its local community, regularly holding events and activities for residents and surrounding neighbours.
Barchester Care Awards 2023 - Divisional Winner!
We're so happy to announce that Hayley Harris has been crowned Learner of the Year for the South Division in the Barchester Care Awards 2023 and is through to the national round of judging.
The Barchester Care Awards celebrate the staff who go the extra mile for the benefit of the 13,000 residents living in Barchester’s 252 care homes and private hospitals across the country. Categories range from ‘Registered Nurse of the Year’ and ‘Carer of the Year’ to ‘Dementia Care Champion’ and ‘Activities Coordinator of the Year’.
Happy Easter
Throughout the whole Easter weekend the residents at The Fernes enjoyed a special church service, Easter egg hunts around our garden, heading out to local Easter fetes, themed quiz and hot cross bun morning but of course the highlight of the whole weekend is getting to enjoy their favourite chocolate Easter egg. The most popular was defiantly the classic Cadbury Twirl edition.
