Hi 5 - Challenge Yourself!

We are launching our first virtual challenge
event and we'd love you to get involved!
The great thing about virtual events is you can take part wherever you are - either individually, or as a team with friends near
or far. 

This year marks Embracing Age's 5th birthday and the event is all about celebrating what everyone, especially our volunteers and supporters, have achieved and doing something fun using everyone's individual talents to raise funds for the journey ahead.

You can choose any challenge - walking, running, cycling, swimming ... scooting, skipping, dancing ... knitting, crafting, painting ... baking ... reading ... writing ... singing - and link it to the number 5 whether by distance (e.g. 5 miles), time (e.g. 5 hours or days) or quantity (e.g. 5 acts of kindness). 

The event will run for 5 days from Monday 5th October and you can complete your challenge in your own time during that period.

The event is open to all ages and abilities and we'd love to see what personal challenge you might come up with. To get involved, you can sign up FREE here.

If you have any questions or comments please do get in touch.

Planning the Way Forward in Richmond upon Thames

We have been speaking to care home managers and reaching out to all our volunteers in the Borough of Richmond upon Thames to gauge individual perspectives on how to support care homes through this period - including looking at the practicalities of visits, a more formal, regular telephone / video calling befriending scheme, letter writing and other ways to connect with residents and help them feel less isolated and forgotten. 

We have also been in touch with other organisations that provide support and companionship to care home residents, as well as our national Care Home Friends champions, to see what other projects across the country are doing, and potentially bring some of those ideas into our local work here in Richmond.

We are collating the results of our findings and will be holding a strategy meeting next week to begin to work on detailed plans for the way forward. We will likely need slightly different arrangements for different care homes, and volunteers naturally have different feelings about whether they feel comfortable visiting homes or prefer a different method of showing companionship. We will also need flexibility to adapt as and when new restrictions are brought in.

But it is clear that care home residents still face a long period of isolation, and the impact this is having on their mental and physical health cannot be overlooked. It is now more important than ever to find a way to bring joy to elderly care home residents through companionship, kindness and community.

We’re so grateful to all our volunteers that have shown gestures of love and connection to residents one way or another over the last months - thank you!

If you’d like to discuss how you could support your local care home, please do contact us. 

National Care Home Friends update

Our national Care Home Friends volunteers have been working hard to support their local care home in new ways. This has ranged from video or telephone calls, sending cards and letters, playing virtual games like "Words with Friends", delivering plants, sweet treats, magazines and activity books, and doing garden visits where possible. We’re very grateful to everyone that has kept in touch with residents and helped them to feel connected to and valued by their community. 

We recently held a Zoom call with some of the champions from our national Care
Home Friends projects and representatives from other churches, who shared the following wonderful new ways they've been supporting their local care homes. Some of these projects were only just getting off the ground before lockdown, and others hadn't even officially launched, so it's fantastic to hear how much they've been doing to love their local care homes. 

In Alphington, children from a church are writing letters to residents - they used to visit the care home once a month to do activities with residents (for example, baking, crafts etc.), so this has been a great way to keep connected the intergenerational link going during this time of isolation.

In Barlestone, one volunteer has been able to speak regularly with a resident via an Alexa device in the resident's room. The resident has macular degeneration and slight dementia, and cannot use a telephone without assistance, so her family set up the Alexa and have given permission to some individuals to access it. The volunteer can connect to it and the lady doesn't have to do anything apart from respond, and then they have a nice chat. A brilliant way of using technology to reach people that might otherwise struggle to connect - and could be used in a range of other ways, including for residents to ask Alexa to access music playlists or other things they might like to listen to without needing to wait for assistance from someone. 

In Mirfield, the team asked a local office to lend them some laptops, tablets and projectors which they have used to continue online services weekly and stream these into local care homes. The projectors allow residents to come together as a group, and the tablets are used to tour from room to room (sanitised by staff between use) for private prayer. The care home staff have seen the positive impact of this virtual ministry and are really embracing it, with contact between the homes and the church increasing. The team have found that streaming live services is better than sharing pre-recorded services as the residents have a deeper sense of connection, as opposed to watching TV, and that the family style services (which sometimes use puppets or other props) have generally worked best as these are more interactive for the residents.

We are delighted to have appointed a Care Home Friends Coordinator for the
Isle of Wight. Rebecca's role is to pioneer and manage the Care Home Friends Project on the Isle of Wight, by connecting and supporting volunteers who will spend time and build friendship with older care home residents. Rebecca has a love of floristry and set up 'The Flower Bouquet Blessing' initiative, with volunteers donating flowers to care home residents and staff across the Island, so we can't wait to see what she achieves in her new role. Rebecca believes “It is vital we show the older generation they are still valued and loved as they move into the later stages of their life and I want to be able to help facilitate that across The Isle of Wight”.

The pandemic has shone a spotlight on the importance of caring for, and befriending, our older generations and, with all our experience and resources, a Care Home Friends project could provide someone who wants to make a difference with everything they need to get started. If you know anyone that might be interested in exploring starting a new project outside Richmond Upon Thames, please ask them to contact us.