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
Our Easter Cake competition entry!
Barchester celebrate Easter with a competition for the best cake prepared with residents and our chefs across all our 235 homes! Our residents discussed their favourite cake recipes and worked with the chef to make our entry, with so many ideas we ended up making two. Residents enjoyed icing the spring lamb and he looks very relaxed and contented on his green grass.
Fortunately we only needed to send photos of the cakes so we have all enjoyed a slice with our afternoon tea. Delicious!
Our garden is full of spring colour!
Our garden is a lovely quiet area enjoyed by residents and we decided to make a new feature for spring 2021! With the help of a donation of vouchers from Garsons garden centre in Titchfield we built this raised planter and filled it with spring colour, thank you to everyone who helped. Residents are really enjoying looking after the new plants
Residents and staff receive 2nd dose of Vaccine!
Residents and staff welcomed Highlands Road Medical Practice to The Fernes for their second dose of the Vaccine, with 100% of residents and staff already having received their first dose we are well on the way to everyone being fully vaccinated.
Zoe Freeman, staff member at The Fernes said: “There is such a sense of relief. It will help to keep our residents safe, we know there is still a long road ahead of us but together with residents receiving indoor visitors since March it feels like a big step”.
A new resident activity - Jewellery making
This Month we introduced our residents to the art of jewellery making. We had a wonderful time designing our very own bracelets and just in time to give ourselves a little treat for mother’s day!
St Patrick's Day
Residents had a fun packed day to celebrate St Patrick's Day with Irish drink tastings, including Guinness and Bailey's of course! River Dance on the big screen with the team trying to follow the steps kept us all laughing too
National Bread Week!
Residents enjoyed rolling up their sleeves for bread week, we made several different types but the favourite was definitely the cheesy one!
