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As part of our Esmee Fairbairn funding project, we were delighted to invite Sarah Reed to deliver training to some of our wonderful volunteers yesterday.

Twelve of our volunteers came together at the Brookfield campus of The University of Leicester to share ideas, laughter and even a few tears as we talked about the role of conversation in creating compassionate and good quality caring environments. It was a very supportive and positive learning environment for everyone – thank you to the ongoing commitment and input from all the amazing volunteers who improve wellbeing for older people each and every week.

We spent the day learning about Reminiscence, Empathic engagement, Active listening and Life story with Sarah, who runs Many Happy Returns and has created some fantastic conversation cards that we have used regularly in care settings with older people, including some who have dementia.

Learning for the Fourth Age are delighted to announce that we have received £8,400 funding from The National Lottery Community Foundation for our brand new Care to Share project.

We want to work with local people to create “Care to Share”, inviting and facilitating skilled amateur and professional bakers to ‘care to share a recipe’ with older people living in a care setting nearby.

This would require them to volunteer to come to a care setting for older people and spend time together measuring, mixing and manipulating ingredients as per the recipe. It would also require them to bake in advance to produce towards the end of the sessions as the other baked treats cooked. The pre-made offering would then be tasted, shared and enjoyed by the care home residents (ideally alongside a hot drink and some conversation)!

If you would like to be involved, please do contact us. We would love to hear from you.

Learning for the Fourth Age (L4A) and our social business partner Planet Leicester Bakers have been delivering ‘bread and conversations’ sessions at ASRA House Residential Care Home through our community project, Baking a Difference.

The Baking a Difference project has received almost £50,000 of National Lottery funding and the CEO of National Lottery operator Camelot, Nigel Railton, recently visited to see the project in action.

Sanctuary Care, owners of ASRA House, report that the sessions have proved to be extremely popular with our residents, especially those living with dementia. This is because they are wonderful for the sense of touch, smell and taste, as well as evoking happy memories.

The project uses the process of baking and sharing fresh, handmade bread to encourage residents to share memories and positive feelings associated with bread in their lives. 

Home manager Dina Dasani said: “Reminiscence activities like this are ideal, especially for our ladies, who would have made their own chapattis for loved ones at home.

“They recall days gone by when they would sit around the table with their relatives, chatting for hours as they made chapattis. It is like they are doing the same here when they are taking part in these sessions.”

Dina said the sensory benefits for older people living with dementia are really important too. “It is such a good sensory activity for adults with dementia – kneading the dough is lovely for touch and of course the smell and taste of the bread they make is amazing.”

Melissa March, CEO of L4A, said: ”It is fantastic to see the power that the joy of bread can have in transforming how people think and feel. At L4A, we are delighted to have a range of partnerships that enable us to improve the quality of later life for older people receiving care in Leicestershire.” 

Lots of learning! Lots of fun!

This week, Learning for the Fourth Age brought together representatives from over ten care settings for a “torn paper” workshop. The idea was to explore a new technique that they could take back to their individual settings, adapt for their own residents and use to support older people across the city and county with creativity and art in later life.

The network focuses on inspiring new ideas, developing different approaches, Ultimately, it is about bringing people together who have a shared role but often are working in silos behind the locked doors of different care settings. They can feel a sense of togetherness and camaraderie, mutual support and their own professional development.

We are proud to be bringing together those with a responsibility for bringing meaning, fun & learning to the lives of older people receiving care across Leicester and Leicestershire to learn from each other.

Ideas for activities are brainstormed by the L4A team and the steering group of the network. We are keen to work with and support everyone involved in this group. Our Activity Coordinator Network loved the Torn Paper workshop, which is kindly funded by the ExPat Foundation. We were also hosted by South Lodge care home.

If your care setting is based in Leicester and Leicestershire and you would like to get involved, please do contact Fiona Smith for more information about our future plans for the network.

Joyful laughter, big smiles and happy souls…

And so ends another Baking A Difference session in one of the many care settings we’ve visited working in partnership with Michelle Stratford of Planet Leicester Bakers.

Since taking on the role of Project Coordinator in January 2019, I have been constantly surprised at how well the bread baking sessions have been received by both residents and care staff alike.

From learning about the science of proving yeast, to mixing and shaping dough, to enjoying fresh bakes with butter and jam it’s been a delight to see such enthusiasm shown by all participants.

It’s also wonderful to witness the profound sense of wellbeing our bread-making activities bring; gently exercising hands, relaxing the mind, evoking memories openly shared, often over our half-time cup of tea.

As the project moves forward I’m looking forward to capturing this companionship by connecting residents with others in their local community and bring people together to share in the beauty of bread.

Anita Barrand

We have been working with a range of interdisciplinary professionals to pilot an action research project called Better Visits.

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 share that we have now got ethics approval from De Montfort University for our questionnaires for relatives and friends who visit loved ones in care settings and that these will hopefully be going out to over 100 people during February. We will then be able to gather information, as well as to offer one-to-one meetings and focus groups sessions as best we can to learn about the challenges faced and the support required to ensure that older people and their loved ones can have better visits.

We are delighted to be able to undertake this work with the fantastic group of like minded people from different organisations. A chance conference sitting on a great table turned the original idea into the proposal that won funding back in July 2017.

In order to build a network of mutual support and ideas sharing, L4A has been working to engage with, listen to and understand the needs and wants of Activity Coordinators working in care settings locally in Leicester and Leicestershire.

We are keen to support Activity Coordinators in finding effective, creative and supportive techniques to use with the older people they care for, to overcome some of the challenges faced by care home residents. This includes sight loss, hearing loss, frailty and limited dexterity.

We held an Active Listening session in September, which was run by Ali Sinclair. This explored active listening skills together, including barriers which can prevent such listening from taking place (for the speaker as well as the listener) and sharing ideas on how these can be overcome.

We also held an ‘Art for Non Artists’ course in November. As well as exploring a range of art materials and ideas and giving the opportunity to have a go, Rowena Williams talked about why art activities matter, how they can be adapted for mobility or cognitive issues and how to make the most of resources and buy knowledgably – really important for those on a tight budget.

All participants rated the sessions as “Very useful” and “very well presented” in feedback questionnaires afterwards. Sessions have been reported to be “fun, lively, social, supportive” by one attendee. Another wrote that she “Really enjoyed the workshop – it made doing art easy”. A third wrote that the session “was a breath of fresh air. Thank you!”

We plan for the remainder of the sessions to cover themes such as poetry and music, multi-sensory activities and a follow up to the very successful art workshop, this time focusing on a craft theme. We will also want to bring all the learning into an on-going accessible resource, although we are finding that the activity coordinators themselves are the best possible resource!

If you and your care setting are based in Leicester or Leicestershire and would like to join us for free, please do contact Fiona Smith on 07933 109 630 or email her on Fiona.smith@l4a.org.uk

In the light of the recent “Care Home for Four Year Olds” documentary being shown on Channel 4, we are proud and delighted to be piloting bringing similarly heartwarming intergenerational work to care settings in Leicester.

So far, our Baking a Difference project is bringing together nursery children from Blossoms Day Nursery and South Lodge care home to make, create and eat gorgeous bread, as well as to share time, stories and new experiences together.

Having been busy baking, the nursery children brought in Diwali present of bread sticks dipped in icing and sprinkles (above) for the care home residents to enjoy.

Having finished a fun hedgehog roll baking session, Michelle from Planet Leicester Bakers tweeted: “Wonderful hour with nursery children and ‘The Grannies’ from a #BakingaDifference care home yesterday. They finished creating and decorated their hedgehog buns and then had a sing along while they baked. #carehome #dementia #community #specialtreat @Learning4thAge ” 

We are very excited indeed to see the project developing in this way and to be bringing generations together in this way in order to create, develop and strengthen community connections between people and places. We hope to be able to do much more of this during the project.

We were really pleased to be working closely with members of the local community to run sessions in three different care homes making Diwali garlands during the recent festivities. Working with fantastic groups of students from the University of Leicester, we were keen to ensure that the long cultural tradition of marking the Festival of Light was spread to an older audience here in the city.

Lots of fun was had by everyone involved in our Diwali wreath making workshops, including this duo in Evington!

An abundance of flowers were created in total and these were used as decorations at the university afterwards… (although residents of care homes have since been asking what happened to the beautiful flowers and whether they could have them back if they have finished being used for the festival itself as they enjoyed them so much!)

The close concentration (caught on camera) of these two wonderful older women in sheltered housing as they enjoyed one of our regular art groups. Over the years, we have seen that painting is therapeutic and mindful for many people of all ages but particularly for people as they age.

We are delighted to have volunteers visiting older people across Leicester and Leicestershire regularly to support L4A’s ongoing art and craft groups. From Market Harborough to Quorn, we will try to support care settings to provide learning and arts activities for their residents.

Collaborating closely, residents of one extra care unit each create a separate part of these designs using lino printing techniques and then combine them together to form a final finished piece that is more than the sum of the separate parts.

These beautiful birds have been proudly painted by Neil who really enjoys the regular art group we host in his sheltered housing unit, even if he is usually the only male attending it. He has proudly framed this series of gorgeous British birds he has produced and we think that he is right to be proud of his work.

Doreen is very proud of her sunflowers and spent time studying Van Gogh’s original in order to create her own interpretation here at her own art group.

Of course, at L4A, we don’t mind if you’re recreating original masterpieces or inventing your own but we are delighted to be supporting so many older artists across Leicester and Leicestershire to feel proud of what they draw, paint, sketch, print, chalk, ink and much much more with us each and every week.

We are always looking for more volunteers to support our art groups across the city and county, or even to start new ones so please do get in touch with us via email or here if you think you could help out at all, or if you would like to support our work in another way – we’d love to hear from you!