A care home manager’s story
With thanks to Merafield Care home for sharing this story.
“From an activity perspective, one of the really momentous times for us through COVID, was our activity coordinator, we've done some work with the National Marine Aquarium and …the girl who was our link at the aquarium, she actually, arranged an interactive private tour of the aquarium, so we had the iPads, we had laptops, and obviously for different people throughout the home, for those residents, they got an interactive tour of the aquarium, so they were able to ask questions, you know about what the turtle was called, all those types of things. And it was just. ……Being a nursing home where we got a lot of our clients who are bed bound, who aren't physically able to go out, it brings a whole new meaning to actually like bringing activities to us. So to be able to actually have a tour of the aquarium via this type of platform was just amazing. ….
We increased our infrastructure of IT, so we have more laptops, we have iPads, there's more things available to go forward. … Another example of that is also, linking in the community with the schools, so we, through our activity coordinator, we had a primary school who again via the use of laptops and iPads, the children sang, you know, a different song that they put together for the residents, during COVID times. So you know 'cause it takes a lot for a whole school to, the logistics of getting them to leave the school to come here to all those kind of risks that are associated as well, so it just meant that they were able to do that via a laptop platform. So yeah, that was another really good example”
What impact did that have in the care home?
“Massive, massive. Yeah, well, it's well-being of the residents, to have that, to sit with somebody even a particular resident I sat with who was just in awe of looking when we got to the big deep dive, tank type thing and just to have that was….. you know, there's some amazing feedback from that, wasn't there?
It was really good, really uplifting. And for the staff, it brings a level of excitement with the staff, which they're part of it as well. So you feel you are bringing something into the home which is, yeah, well it's just an all-round winner, isn't it?”