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
Messy Vintage - Hope Springs
We had another wonderful session of Messy Vintage; our wonderful volunteer, Jill, and her lovely helpers came along to host a session. This month we were celebrating spring.
Snowdrops are the first flowers to bloom after winter, giving us hope that spring is on its way. All of our residents look forward to the sessions and it all coincides with bible readings and hymns.
The Fernes BAFTA Awards
We hosted our own BAFTA awards ceremony. The activities team made up some nomination forms and we got the residents to vote for various categories. Some of the categories were as follows: Best Tea Maker, Best Smile, Most Helpful, and much more. We took photos round of all the staff which made it easier for the residents to vote.
We held a ceremony and celebrated all our staff members and the residents awarded the certificates. It was great fun and we all laughed.
In the photo is Emma Barzotelli-Jackson our receptionist who won the Best Tea Maker Award.
Great Ormond Street Hospital
One of our ladies is a very keen knitter, so we decided to put the knitted squares to great use. We managed to get a box up and the aim was to fill it. Which Margaret successfully did. In a record amount of time, with the help from senior carer, Christy, casting on and off.
Christy then went above and beyond the call of duty, and delivered the knitted squares to Great Ormond Street neonatal unit.
The nurses kindly gave Christy a tour of the unit, where she saw the squares being out to good use, with one of them as a blanket for the premature babies.
What a great achievement for Margaret and it has spurred her on to continue knitting.
Christmas Gift Donations
Christmas has come early for residents at our home in Fareham thanks to a gift donation scheme from doctors at Queen Alexandra hospital.
A team of five doctors have been handing out hundreds of gifts to care home residents across the area, with more than 20 residents at the the Fernes care home, in 6 Samuel Mortimer Close, received the gifts donated on Saturday.
The project began in 2016, with last year seeing 300 presents being given by 'Christmas elves' from the hospital in Portsmouth - and they are on track to almost double the number this year, according to founder Dr Ellie Reed.
The doctor, who specialised in elderly care, said: 'We have had pledges of 500 gifts, and plan to go to 20 homes in total.
Fernes resident Peggy Richardson said she was 'so surprised’ by her gift - which she is saving for Christmas day. She said: 'It's a really nice idea - anything is welcome'.
Earlier in the year, The Fernes helped tackle loneliness by inviting Year Six pupils from St Columba Church of England Primary Academy, in Tewkesbury Avenue, Fareham, to take part in activities ranging from scarecrow making to vegetable planting with their older residents.
Keydell Nurseries Visit
Staff and residents get in the Christmas spirit, we started the Christmas festivities with a visit to Keydell Nursery, we had a wonderful time, the lights and decorations made us all smile and reminisce about Christmases gone by……it was such a popular trip we did it over two days, so that we could take as many as possible, and also have another trip planned!
We had such fun we met Father Christmas and all his helpers, and even got to meet Rudolph! It got our Christmas off to a great start!
Bonfire Party
We had a fabulous Bonfire party, we invited families and residents to join us here at the Fernes for a fun filled evening. We all came together at 6pm, where we enjoyed luxury hot chocolates and the odd gin and tonic, hot dogs and toffee apples for supper.
The wonderful singer Em Louise entertained us with her amazing vocals. It was a really lovely evening, most of our residents joined us, we had sparklers at 7.30pm even if it was raining it didn’t dampen our spirits.
We all danced and sang the night away, with a lot of our residents enjoying a dance with the staff. We had a wonderful time.
