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As part of our musical experiences project, we have been working with ASRA care home on Loughborough Road.

We wanted to thank Su, Urmila and Yoginea (pictured) from the Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre for volunteering their time, kindness and beautiful singing. We are always grateful to Sabbir, the Activities Coordinator at ASRA house, for always trying to get the best possible experiences for the residents. 

Music can have the power to bring people together as a community within a care home. Music can tap into the memories of people who live with dementia in a way that other interventions often struggle to do. Music in this project will be a vehicle for creating connection, meaning and fun for older people in later life who live in care settings. 

We were especially delighted to see residents joining in dancing and singing, as well as care staff (shown above) finding time to leave the floor so that they could perform for residents too. 

This work has been generously funded by the Sir George Earle Benevolent Fund through the Leicestershire and Rutland Community Foundation. 

And, finally, even Fiona and Melissa from L4A had to get involved…

Residents at Brook House care home in Husbands Bosworth have really enjoyed taking part in some of The January Challenge, which you can find more about here. 

They particularly enjoyed ‘drawing without fear’ where you close your eyes and see what happens; ‘singing a rainbow’ where you list songs that have a colour named within the title or lyrics; and ‘colouring music’ where they listened to pieces of music with their eyes closed and tried to describe the colours of it! 

Here they are pictured with another successful challenge that they took part in – ‘four inch collages’. We are sure you’ll agree that they finished artwork looks fantastic all together too! 

Find out more about the January Challenge and how to get involved at any time of year here. Or download the free pack we helped to put together specifically for care settings here.

Learning for the Fourth Age has been working with 64 Million Artists to support The January Challenge. 

64 Million Artists believe that ‘when we use our creativity we can make positive change in our lives and the world around us’. They aim to be a catalyst for the creativity of everyone in the UK. 

The January Challenge is a series of swift challenges released daily throughout January to prompt us all to be more creative in our lives. 

L4A was honoured to be asked to look through the challenges and tweak them to make them more accessible for people living and working in care homes.

Project Manager, Fiona Smith, said, “Our focus is always on what people can do, and we appreciate the many demands on those working in busy care homes, the time pressures and the differing needs and capabilities of residents. We hope our suggestions might help, but they are just that – suggestions – and there is no wrong way!” 

The free resource is still available all year round in case you might it find useful: The Champions Pack for Care Settings.

Learning for the Fourth Age were delighted to welcome Mel Knott and some of her students from DMU (De Montfort University) to Devonshire Court care home in Oadby recently.

Mel is a dance teacher and was great at demonstrating the important role that movement and music can play for everyone at any age, including those who are seated in chairs, have dementia or both. 

Older people enjoyed a really lively, interactive and engaging session, which was particularly tailored to those with cognitive impairment. 

It was a great success and we look forward to being able to host Mel and her students again very soon for more dancing workshops. 

We were pleased to have created a series of packs with DMU students full of ideas that we delivered to care settings to help boost learning and activity.

As well as a range of lovely activities for older people from stone painting to animal magic cards, we were also really delighted with the feedback we received from some of the students involved as volunteers too.

We had over 10 students positively engaging with the work and some of the comments are included below:

“Thank you so much for looking through this, it has been really helpful as I have done this on my own. I can’t wait to see pictures of them enjoying it. Thank you for the help throughout. I am thoroughly enjoying this opportunity!”

“I wish to once again thank you for your robust instructions and clear guidance: they have really helped a lot!”

We were also delighted that the activities our student volunteers so clearly enjoyed creating were in turn really beneficial to older people receiving care locally. Feedback from staff working in care settings using the ideas and packs created included the below, which gives an idea of the wide range of different activities being shared, and the way in which these could be utilised to engage a broad range of visitors to the care home:

“The family members very much enjoyed the animal cards; I enlarged the pictures and we handed them round asking if they could name the animal and then I read out the interesting fact on the back of the small original. I enlarged the crossword and we completed it collectively. With the word search, I enlarged the original and made several copies so everyone could see a grid and the family members shouted out when they had found the words and I completed a large copy we had stuck up where everyone could see it. It made a really fun afternoon which we teamed with the celebration of a family member’s birthday (who really likes animals) so it was a bit like a party afternoon for her!

On Friday we are going to paint the stones. As we are a Christian home, we are going to decorate them with scripture and put the Christian fish symbol on the other side. When they are dry, I hope to varnish them and place them around the garden for family members, staff and visitors to find, share and give an uplifting message to those who find them.

Thank you so much. This has been one of the most successful packs for our family members.”

We distributed 12 packs to care homes in Leicester and Leicestershire and up to 40 different older people took part in the activities in the different homes.

We were very pleased to receive partial funding of £6,000 from Leicestershire County Council’s SHIRE grants fund to create a resource for visitors.

The hope was that we could empower visitors to trial activities and learning with their loved one that they were going to see and, in turn, boost the quality of visits for older people receiving care as well as the enjoyment of them for visitors too. 

We applied for the funds when care settings were barely open at all to visitors. We felt that we could create a resource to support and encourage better quality visits to care settings without increasing any risk to residents living there. 

We also hoped that the resource would improve the visiting experience for relatives and friends who have reported finding it upsetting and hard to go to see their loved one in a care setting at times. 

We have been working with two experienced volunteers and wanted to take time to thank them individually for their contributions to this project, for which we have been very grateful. 

Nicky Reynolds who worked in care settings for a long time, notably as an activity coordinator for many years. She has also been a volunteer with L4A and has done everything from leading craft sessions to letter writing and from word puzzles through to big games.

Dee Lehan-Matthews has had personal experience of care homes for her own loved ones and wanted to use that knowledge and experience to share with others in the same position. We have benefitted from Dee’s time and dedication as a volunteer for almost a decade.

Dee and Nicky are both very familiar with a range of different care settings, as well as dementia. We met regularly with us during the creation of this resource to sense check ideas, and to ensure that we were writing in the correct tone etc. They also shared a wealth of ideas that have fed into the final resource. Thank you very much to Nicky and Dee for their work with us on this. 

We hope to be able to finalise the resource and share it with you all very soon!

At the start of 2022, we were delighted to receive £9,850 from The National Lottery Community Fund to pilot taking our team of staff and volunteers back into care settings again. 

In the muddle of masks, LFT covid testing and in between outbreaks of Covid stopping all visits, our Revisiting project has seen us getting back to face to face work with care home residents once again. 

Lockdowns have meant, sadly, that many older people receiving care are more at risk of isolation, boredom and loneliness than ever. Most have had fewer visits than normal as a result of the ways in which the pandemic changed the care setting as people seek to minimise risk. 

The care sector faces an unprecedented storm of workforce shortages, budget shortages and rising costs in the context of an ageing population, a working age population in increasing need of social care and more people with higher needs than ever requiring care.

In spite of the many challenges created by the different environment, and the notable risk still posed to older people, our team of staff and volunteers have really enjoyed getting back to business. We have been bringing activity, joy and learning to care homes once again during 2022 with craft sessions, quizzes, word games, music and more.

Thank you to everyone involved in the pilot, notably to Agnes House and Devonshire Court care homes, and especially to Fiona Smith for leading and coordinating this piece of work. 

We were sad to see the end of our Baking a Difference project working with Planet Leicester Bakers recently and so we chose to celebrate it in the only way we knew how – with an afternoon tea in a care setting. We welcomed activities staff and volunteers from other care settings across Leicestershire to enjoy cakes, scones and speciality breads.

Alongside multiple cups of tea, we enjoyed lots of catching up and conversations, as well as the showing of our film showcasing the project, which you can see here.

Older people who had taken part in the project were particularly pleased to welcome Cameron on the keyboard to accompany the tea party by playing some beautiful light classical music in the background too.

The final report of Baking a Difference will be available shortly.

The ‘How to’ videos are available here so that you too can learn how to exploit the loveliness of bread for the benefit of older people you care for or for your own enjoyment. Do please let us know what you think of the hedgehogs, snakes and science on offer!

Our thanks, as ever, to Michelle Stratford from Planet Leicester Bakers for all of her time, thought and skill in delivering this project in conjunction with our team, as well as to all the staff, residents and volunteers who have been involved over the last year or so too.

Art with Heart is a project focused on supporting those with dementia to explore arts and culture from around the world, including art, language and poetry.

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Learning for the Fourth Age were delighted to receive funding from the Leicestershire and Rutland Community Foundation to cover sessions in two care settings with a specialist in both dementia and creative arts.

Our thanks to Vicky Olivera for taking the time to plan, organise and deliver the sessions At Agnes House and St George’s care homes and special thanks to our volunteer Safooraa for supporting these sessions, which were well received by staff and residents alike.

We set up an art group with residents in William House sheltered housing unit (a part of Wyggeston’s Hospital) a few years ago and our volunteers and staff have supported the residents there ever since.

However, during conversations with the artists there, it became clear that many of them would like to learn new skills on external courses and to bring these back to the group, as well as to try and celebrate all the art that they have created and achieved over the years.

We were delighted to receive a grant of £850 from the Barchester Charitable Foundation to cover the cost of new art equipment, framing existing work so that people could share and celebrate it and to pay for courses in the community for the group’s artists to develop their skills.

Now the pictures are out of storage folders, framed and proudly displayed on walls around the sheltered housing unit that they all live in. Residents report learning new skills, improved social connections, a sense of pride in their achievements and enjoyment.