For residents at Woodhorn Park care home in Ashington, the long awaited reunion with one family member has become a reality, as one single named visitor is now allowed to visit each resident in their bedroom.

There has been much anticipation of this moment by families and residents alike.  Guidance was issued by the Government on March 4 and Barchester Healthcare, who run Woodhorn Park care home, is proceeding with a safe and cautious approach to visiting. Strict protocols are in place with all visitors required to have a negative Lateral Flow Device test result before being allowed into the home, and infection control measures and social distancing in place for every visit, with hand holding allowed but not recommended.

Despite the need for testing and social distancing, it was still welcome news for so many residents and their family members to be able to meet in the comfort of their bedroom. Residents and their relatives enjoyed getting together and catching up face to face.

Staff and residents at Barchester’s Woodhorn Park care home, in Ashington, celebrated Easter with a whole host of different activities including an Easter Egg Hunt and Easter Bonnet parade.

Residents at Woodhorn Park enjoyed an eggs-tensive range of Easter activities, from Easter egg painting competition, Hot Cross bun tasting with poems written by our activities coordinator Georgia Thompson, Easter church service and prayers, flower arranging, Easter card making and Easter themed games of pin the tail on the bunny.  Residents also tucked in to a delicious Easter meal of traditional roast Lamb and all the trimmings prepared by the home’s chef Penny Sylvester.

Senior General Manager, Julie Bond said: “As always, we’ve all been looking forward to Easter. It’s such a nice time of the year – the residents love all the colourful Easter eggs and the Easter Bonnet parade. It’s really been an eggs-cellent few days!”

Staff and residents at Woodhorn Park marked International Day of Happiness by spending the day sharing messages of positivity to inspire each other and help promote wellbeing.

The United Nation’s International Day of Happiness is a global celebration to raise awareness of the importance of mental wellbeing.  March 20th has been established as the annual International Day of Happiness and all 193 United Nations member states have adopted a resolution calling for increasing human happiness to be given greater priority.

Residents took part in discussions about what makes them happy and shared ideas about what they do to cheer themselves up and their mantras to live by. 

Residents and the care team at Woodhorn Park enjoyed the recent Nutrition and Hydration Week. The team got everyone involved spreading awareness of the importance of nutrition and hydration. The home held an array of activities throughout the week, which left them well and truly hungry for more!. Julie Bond, Senior General Manager, said: “It was an action packed week.

Staff and residents at Woodhorn Park Care Home in Ashington are celebrating their recent 10/10 score on carehome.co.uk from 45 customer reviews on the ratings website.

Carehome.co.uk is the leading UK Care Home review website with 17,609 Care Homes, 16 million+ visits per year and 191,088 Care Home reviews. Residents and relatives share honest reviews out of ten for their experience of care homes throughout the country which then produce a median score overall for the home or service.

Currently out of the 100 care services in the Northumberland area rated on the website, only Woodhorn Park has a score of 10/10, meaning the home is ranked the best in the area for the quality of the services it provides.

Residents at Barchester Healthcare’s Woodhorn Park care home, celebrated Mother’s Day with an afternoon tea party and video calls with the family. The home was beautifully decorated with fresh flowers and bunting for the occasion.

Staff at Woodhorn Park arranged small gifts for every resident, afternoon tea, discussion about how the role of the mother has changed, reminiscences about the residents’ childhood.  

Senior General Manager, Julie Bond said: “We’ve all had a really lovely day. Although Mother’s Day has had to be a bit different this year, our mums have had video calls with family/we have made good use of our visiting suite to make sure lots of our residents had a visit with their loved ones.”