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
Acts of Kindness day
We celebrated Acts of Kindness Day by making goody bags and we delivered to them all our local day centres and sheltered accommodation schemes, we made the goody bags which included teabags, sweets, chocolates and shortbread which was handmade by our hospitality team. What an amazing gesture of kindness, we met some lovely people in our local community (socially distanced)
Team award for employee of the Month
Cassie our new General Manager could not decide on an individual employee of the month because as a team we have pulled together and worked so hard to support residents and each other. We all felt like winners enjoying our treats and thank you cards from Cassie.
Garsons Garden Centre's kind gesture
Our local Garden Centre have very kindly donated £100.00 vouchers for our memorial garden, we are planning on making a section of garden into a serene and peaceful place to sit and remember, we would like to include a water feature, looking forward to the spring months ahead so we can get started.
Our first resident in 2016 celebrates her 95th birthday
One of our lovely residents celebrated her 95th birthday with a beautiful homemade cake, made by our hospitality team. Mrs L has been here since the home opened in 2016 and can been seen in this picture with two of our members of staff who have also been here since the home opened.
Christmas Baking
Here at The Fernes, we love to bake. Our hospitality team give us the chance weekly to enjoy baking club, so over Christmas, Zoe our Activities Coordinator, and residents, made their own Christmas cookies. It was messy, but we had great fun!
Rohan the Piano Man
Amongst all the Christmas fun and cheer that Barchester provided via Zoom Calls, some of which included Nutcracker the ballet, a tour of Blenheim Palace, we also welcomed Rohan from Canada, who gave the staff and residents a fun and entertaining piano performance. It was great fun we were all dancing and singing!
