Edition 3 in our Christmas Blog Series highlighting how our homes celebrate the festive period comes from our Residential Homs Park Beck in St Leonard’s-on-Sea. The home’s manager Steve talks us through their active Christmas.
“At our residents, relatives and staff meeting around September we ask for ideas on what staff and residents would like to do or entertainment they want. Regarding entertainment/ groups this sometimes has to be booked well in advance. For example the Brownies who come to sing are arranged four months in advance, the same with the Pantomime. We have also arranged for bell ringers to come in and I arranged these in March this year. We spread the entertainment out over all of December so every week there is something going on as well as in house activities such as making book Christmas trees and other decorations, Christmas songs playing and also Christmas singalong on the guitar.
We also have Elf day every December where we make cupcakes and staff dress as elves and we have entertainment.
Staff usually dress up around Christmas time and all help to decorate the home along with the residents that want to. I send the Christmas party invites out to family and friends two months before to give them plenty of notice and ask them to let us know if they are coming to ensure we have a rough idea so know to order enough food and have adequate staffing levels.
Always popular at Christmas is our raffle. This in itself needs plenty of time for organising as we need to make sure we have plenty of donations and tickets to sell.
With all of this going on we also need to make sure everyday tasks are done, especially as some services close for a period of the festive break.
As a manager it is always a busy time as we head in to a new year as maintaining high standards at all times is a must. But all the extra work is well worth it to see how much joy the atmosphere of the season, activities and the entertainment bring to the residents.
I personally get to come out of retirement each Christmas to entertain the residents, families and friends which is an honour as I have been asked to do this for the last few years now.”
