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
Care Home Open Day
The Mayor of Fareham, Councillor Geoff Fazackarley, and the Mayoress, Tina Fazackarley, came along to our Open Day and met with guests, residents and staff at The Fernes. Residents thoroughly enjoyed the 1950’s atmosphere created at the home by staff dressing up, and many of them danced the afternoon away to familiar '50s and '60s music.
Staff and residents, who are always keen to do their bit for charity, were also celebrating Fundraising Week and invited their Care Home Open Day guests to get involved with the great bake off, raffle & tombola. We managed to raise £110 in total for Barchester's Charitable Foundation.
Dementia Awareness Week
The Fernes took part in Dementia Awareness Week by supporting the local Alzheimer's Society and Dementia Friendly Hampshire display stand in Fareham Shopping Centre.
The home also hosted a number of different events for Dementia Awareness Week, including a balloon release for Dementia Action; residents and their families sponsored balloons and they were released at 3:00 p.m on Tuesday 16th May. The balloon that has travelled furthest by 30th June wins a prize!
They held a small garden party with the fantastic Rod Hack providing some brilliant music. The weather almost put a stop to their fun, but luckily it just about managed to hold off pouring down until they had finished and gone inside.
The finale was a 100 question quiz - a mighty challenge for anyone! Residents fought bravely through the questions, including a picture round, musical round and the usual general knowledge. The winning team was ‘Stuffins & Spellers,’ who are proud to win their trophy.
If you fancy a go, look out for their next pub quiz.
Chicks at the Fernes
Chicks are one of the main symbols of Easter and, luckily enough for residents at The Fernes, chicks are exactly what Easter delivered!
On Monday 10th April, their eggs were delivered by Living Eggs; 12 little ovals containing chicks just waiting to hatch!
On the day they arrived, they stayed in the incubator. By Tuesday, residents could hear faint chirps coming from within the eggs; they went to bed that night not expecting to wake up to find one very tired and bedraggled chick. It hatched at 4:00am and they named it Sunny.
Sunny spent his first 12 hours with only people for company and kept sitting on the other eggs to try and encourage them to hatch. It worked, and at 5:00pm on Wednesday, our second chick hatched. Welcome to the world, little Cher! From then on, chicks started hatching faster, with a few hatching around 8:00pm, and even more in the early hours of Wednesday morning - and some in the early hours of Thursday morning.
In total, 11 out of 12 eggs hatched, which is an amazing! Two Chicks were 'bullied' by some of the other chicks, so were taken home by one of our carers to be nursed back to health away from them.
The remaining 9 all have homes to go to after their initial stay with us, with the majority heading to local small holdings.
The experience of hatching chicks has been amazing for residents; they got to hold and help care for them as they grew, which included cleaning them out and feeding them. Residents and staff look forward to doing this again - maybe with ducklings next time!
We are a top 20 care home!
We are delighted to announce that The Fernes has been named as one of the top 20 care homes in the South East of England for 2017 by Carehome.co.uk. A huge congratulations to everyone who has made this possible!
Scrabble Day Spells Fun
Staff and residents at The Fernes celebrated everyone’s favourite classic game on 13th April – or otherwise known as National Scrabble Day.
The home was in high spirits as they held a Scrabble contest with residents, relatives and visitors from Cedar Court and Tiverton Court.
The Fernes gets silly for Red Nose Day
Residents at the Fernes enjoyed a wonderful bake sale and coffee afternoon to help raise money for Comic Relief.
Residents made cupcakes and decorated them with Maltesers, golden sprinkles, love hearts and butter cream or freshly whipped cream.
There was another heart-shaped carrot cake donated by Lifestyle Specialist, Kat, a small cake donated by General Manager, Catherine, a yummy lemon drizzle loaf baked by a resident’s friend, and some scrummy lemon cupcakes baked by another resident’s daughter. These all went down a treat and we managed to raise £35.30 in total! The Fernes donated more than £30 through buying red noses, badges and deeley boppers, as well as the Maltesers to bake with!
We also took part in NAPA's 'Sing-a-Song' challenge, with everyone singing ‘Sing’ by The Carpenters.
Well done to everyone who contributed and took part, and thank you to those who came and helped us to enjoy a magical and fun afternoon - we can’t wait to see you again!
For more information about activities, please contact our Lifestyle Specialist, Kat Claridge on 01329443600.
