L4A

We work with older people receiving care across Leicester and Leicestershire

Projects

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“Amazing training session. We loved it!”

Our very first Baking a Difference training day brought care home managers, activity staff, residents and volunteers together – all sharing the common aim of wanting to make a positive difference to the lives of older people in Leicestershire through the baking of bread. For 6 hours in Evington they talked and mixed, laughed and kneaded and learned exactly how they could make that difference, under the excellent guidance of community baker Michelle Stratford from Planet Leicester Bakers.  Michelle herself recently reflected that not all skilled professionals are good trainers – well, Michelle is one of the best, as these comments from participants testify:

“Amazing training session – we loved it!”

“Michelle is a great trainer. Thoroughly enjoyed her class”

“Super workshop. Had lots of fun and learnt a new skill”

The next challenge for those involved is for them to put their new-found skills into practice, through our Baking a Difference sessions in local care homes and sheltered housing.

So that many more older people can experience the joys of bread, conversation and community.

 

 

 

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Special Movie Matinee spreads that glorious feeling!

‘Grand as owt!’ – a lovely comment made by an audience member after the movie matinee of Singing in the Rain’ – a unique event organised as part of our Social Prescribing project by L4A and Friends of Evington.

Fun and fond memories were shared by 40 delighted film lovers enjoying this ‘feel good’ classic at Evington Park House, and in all of its technicolour glory! With a mobile film unit hired from the Phoenix Theatre- a huge 10 foot screen, high definition film stock and quality ‘surround sound’ the Panel Room was transformed into a comfy cinema for the afternoon.

The idea for this special screening was inspired by Lionel Oakley, a participant on L4A’s Social Prescribing Project whose love of film he shared with his dear late wife Joyce.  Lionel recalls “ ‘Whilst courting we regularly went to the pictures (or ‘the flicks’ as we sometimes called them) because back in our day that’s how we entertained ourselves. Once, after watching ‘Singing in the Rain’ at the Odeon in town we walked home up the High Street. It had been raining heavily that evening so with careless abandon we splashed in the puddles, dancing and laughing all the way at our own, funny renditions of songs from the film. It was a beautiful moment and one that I still cherish to this day.’

 

‘It’s been an honour to share my love of film with friends and neighbours, bringing the cinema to our doorstep for everyone in the local community to enjoy. I was pleased as punch with the turnout and I’d love to do this again. I’m sure with Anita’s help we’ll be able to make this happen. ‘What a Glorious Feeling’ that would be!’

 

And we will! L4A’s Social Prescribing Project hopes to work in partnership with the Downing Drive Patient Group to plan another exciting social event soon.

To find out more please contact L4A Project Coordinator Anita Barrand on 07964 091693 or email Anita.Barrand@l4a.org.

 

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Continuing Impact of ‘The Power of Stories’

Following the success of our ‘The Power of Stories’ project, which took storytelling into care homes and trained staff in techniques of storytelling, it’s been wonderful to hear about a developing legacy from the project.

Karen Faver from West View care home has written and illustrated her first book, which she designed especially for use in the care home!

Karen undertook the training and mentoring offered by ‘The Power of Stories’ project and by the time it ended she was using storytelling regularly with residents at West View. Inspired by the impact this was having, Karen combined her 21 years experience of working in care with both her love of drawing and her wire-haired fox terrier Herb – and ‘Herb’s Perfect Bone’ was born.

The book tells the story of Herb as he travels around the world in search of his perfect bone. Discussing the story and seeing iconic images from the different countries Herb visits has given residents the opportunity to tell stories of their own – where they have been and what they got up to.

Residents love it, as do their families and other staff in the home, as it helps enable recall and gives them something to talk about.

“It’s about going on a journey with them, bringing back memories that have been long forgotten – it’s all positive!” says Karen; “and the repetition engages people – residents pick the words up and say them with me as we go through the book.”

Karen is delighted with the impact ‘The Power of Stories’ has had on her own life too.

“Doing the storytelling project was quite out of my comfort zone and I didn’t know if I would be able to carry on with it, but with the help and support from the project I began to grow in confidence. Because I enjoyed drawing I was encouraged to do a storyboard – then I took things further and decided to do a book that I thought would be good with people with dementia.”

Plans are already underway for the next story, with residents fully involved and eager to think up new adventures for Herb.

 

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Tactile Textiles Update

Since November 2015 we have been working with residents of Pilgrim Home Evington on ‘Tactile Textiles’, a project within Leicester Ageing Together, funded by the Big Lottery.

Each week small groups of pupils from Linden Primary School have been visiting a group of residents from Pilgrim Home. The combination of 9 and 90 year olds sharing creative activity has been a wonderful success, providing constant opportunities for young and old to share skills, ideas and experiences. Whilst they were choosing fabrics, threading needles and learning how to finger knit, children have also heard about what daily life was like long before they were born and the older people have learned all about the latest playground crazes. The different ages have happily shared their stories and thoroughly enjoyed each others company – “I didn’t think the elderly liked being around children but as soon as we came here I realised that we have a lot in common – the elderly are very interesting” commented one of the children.

One of many highlights of the project has been celebrating the achievement of making three collaborative textile wall hangings, each depicting a verse from ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. Over the weeks these were stitched from scratch to designs created by the group, each hanging made up of six background pieces made by a younger person/older person partnership. Everyone had such fun in the making of all the elements for these and now the hangings are proudly displayed in the hallway of Pilgrim Home.

 

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We’ve Baked A Difference

After 12 successful pilot sessions in three different care settings, the Baking a Difference project has sadly come to a close. For now.

Having conducted experiments about yeast and gluten, learned how to create our own sourdough starters and discussed our own individual personal histories with bread, we plaited, kneaded and ate our way through all sorts of dough.

As well as being great fun, Baking a Difference workshops proved to be bonding and sociable for everyone involved. The smell of freshly baked rolls wafting through the home brought staff, visitors and other residents to see the activities underway and prompted many to join in future sessions.

We are grateful to our partners Planet Leicester Bakers for their thoughtful input into planning and delivery the sessions to two nursing homes and a sheltered housing unit, sensitively tailoring the workshops for the individuals living within each environment.

There is a report about the work that we did, including lessons learned and ideas for future development, available here: BAKING A DIFFERENCE END OF PILOT PROJECT REVIEW

We would love to receive any feedback from you about this project and it’s work so please do get in touch with us.

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Patchwork Project

Learning for the Fourth Age is privileged to work with lots of different older people in many different and varied care settings. However, some are very closely located and we have been keen to bring people together from different settings for shared learning activities for a while.

By working closely with the wonderful staff at Harley Grange and Ashlands care homes, we are proud to have brought together residents from both settings to share the craft activities that they had undertaken together and produced a shared piece of work – the patchwork! Plenty of tea, coffee and biscuits were also enjoyed too.

The patchwork project has been led by Anita Barrand with support from volunteers Jean Helps and Dee Lehan-Matthews and staff from both homes. We are keen to explore other ways of helping to bring the outside in and take residents out in going forwards, particularly when we can support people to learn about different people and cultures. Watch this space!

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50+ Wellbeing Day proves to be a big hit in Evington!


We were very proud to learn of the success of a recent 50+ Wellbeing Day event that was organised and led by Anita Barrand as part of our Social Prescribing project in Evington, with lots of help and input from the Helen Pettman at Friends of Evington too.

The 50+ Wellbeing Event was held on Saturday 24th June at Evington Park House and tried to get awareness of our charity, our Social Prescribing project and LAT out there at hyper local grassroots level.

Anita Barrand says “We had great turn out! Huge heartfelt thanks to all of the wonderful LAT staff and volunteers who ran stalls and activities: Outstanding moments include Suky Garcha’s ‘laughter yoga’, WEA aromatherapy ladies (WOW!), the Downing Drive patients who did a sterling job of recruiting volunteers, exhibiting their artwork and generally mucking in and not forgetting the truly lovely Gurpreet from AoHL. Thank you for your support and look forward to future collaborations!”

Following the success of this initial event, we hope to be able to try and organise future ones to drum up more awareness in the future. We hope that some of the contacts we made will become volunteers and learners through our Social Prescribing: More Than Medication project. 

 

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Enhancing Wellbeing Transforming Lives Together

Melissa March, our CEO, was delighted to be invited to attend the Leicester Academy for the Study of Ageing (LASA) exciting event, “Enhancing Wellbeing, Transforming Lives Together” on 11th July at King Power Stadium.

However, we were all surprised and amazed when she returned with an oversized cheque for £2,500 and the exciting opportunity to work with other to pilot a brand new idea called Better Visits!

The day brought together a range of people with an interest in transforming the lives of older people: researchers, clinicians, older people and their carers, and companies and organisations who provide services to this group. Delegates worked together in interdisciplinary teams to develop ideas for new research to improve the health and wellbeing of older people. These ideas were judged by an expert panel, and at the end of the day the successful proposals were awarded seed-corn funding to begin this research.

Better Visits aims to improve the experience that relatives have when going to a care setting to see their loved ones with dementia. The plan is to pilot creating and using a resource in one care setting based on what existing visitors tell us what challenges they face when visiting and what could potentially enhance this for them.

We are delighted to be able to undertake this action research and for all the support we received in turning the original idea into a proposal that won funding. We are also very grateful to Prime Life for sponsoring the prize and we look forward to working in one of their local care homes to trial it all out.

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Art on the Ward – final project report

Learning for the Fourth Age is delighted to have worked with over 200 people during our first ever pilot taking learning into this new setting! You can download the final report of this pilot, packed with photos and quotes that highlight the impact of this project here:

Final Report Art on the Ward

With the support of the Arts in Mental Health Coordinators working for the NHS Leicestershire Partnership Trust, we set about working on two wards in two different locations with two different people leading the sessions. The impact and success of the project have been significant and we are already seeking further funding to pilot similar work targeting older people with mental health conditions, including dementia. Fingers crossed!

Our heartfelt thanks go to Clare Miles and Rowena Williams who delivered such lovely, inspiring work each week for fifteen weeks over the course of the project. The photos of people engaging in learning, the quotes from older people and staff and the photographs of the artwork produced show the value of artistic learning interventions for older people recovering in hospitals. Both Clare and Rowena have a wealth of experience in working with stroke patients, dementia and those recovering with L4A but also as a nurse and a speech and language therapist respectfully.

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Tales We Have Told and Shared

The Power of Stories: Tales for Telling and Sharing

L4A was delighted to be featured on regional news as part of The People’s Projects (more information here). Five charities pitched projects to the TV audience in order to gain votes from the public and L4A The Power of Stories won. This project ended in March 2017 but a legacy from the project continues with staff and volunteers feeling empowered to continue the work.

You will see from this video here that stories really do have the power to help older people feel healthier and happier. Listening to stories together unlocks memories and prompts people to share their own stories – making friends in the process. Working with professional storytellers, this project also involved training and supporting carers, care home staff and volunteers with storytelling skills.

Storytelling Video

Learning for the Fourth Age (L4A) delivered storytelling in 10-12 care homes and we have found it to be a very positive way of including and involving those whose situation can cause them to feel isolated and excluded from activity. The impact of the project was so significant that we recruited Hilary Comfort to evaluate the project in detail for us. We are delighted with what she found and the full report can be downloaded here for free:

Storytelling Evaluation

We are so inspired by the impact of this work that we are going to try and find further funding to roll it out to more settings, more nursing homes, more staff and even, for example, community hospital ward settings in the near future so watch this space!