Our stories

Peace of mind

Moving into a care home made easy

Our care team are here to make sure that making the move is as easy as possible for you and your loved one. If you still need reassurance, here are some stories from our residents, their families and our care team.

My name is Ashleigh and I am the new Manager of Alexandra Court. I have over 16 years’ experience working in residential care, which I have enjoyed every day of! I feel privileged to be able to work with and support people to make a positive difference to their lives.

Welcome to our New Manager at Alexandra Court

Here at Belvoir Vale we have a new staff member join us today! She saw how busy and hard working our staff are and wanted to help us out, so we got her one of our shirts and put on her PPE and off she went monitoring the floor, making sure the staff were doing all of their jobs.

Today at Troutbeck we have been celebrating the chocolatiers of York, Birmingham and Bristol.

Celebrating Chocolatiers

We did many different activities over the Christmas period. The firm favourite had to be the hot chocolate bar. All the residents and staff loved it, especially adding in the marshmallows.

Christmas Activities

The staff enjoyed coming in their Christmas jumpers. The residents enjoyed the different outfits.

Christmas Jumper Day

We were delighted to receive this certificate from Reading Lions thanking everyone at Riverview for their recent donations to the Reading Food Bank.

It's so important to support our community in what ever way we can and it is something we will continue to do.

Reading Lions Say Thank You

The Westbourne residents and staff celebrated New Years Eve in style. Lots of smiles to start 2021 with our colourful hats, a new tennis game and of course dancing to our favourite tunes.

Happy New Year.

New Years Eve Celebrations

Bridlington Priory were asking residents to join them this year in lighting up your windows with the words, hope, light and love. Therefore, we decided to join them and get creative.

Hope, Light and Love

J and I had a pod visit yesterday to see B on her birthday. We can't express enough our thanks and gratitude that all the staff put in to celebrate B's birthday. With everyone singing happy birthday and the candle on the cake, B's face lit up and we saw the biggest smile ever.

Message From A Family Member

We weren't about to let the snow go to waste so we wrapped up warm and headed outside. A snowball fight ensued with plenty of laughter and shots on target! We were especially proud of our snowman, using the hand painted pebbles from our snake pebble for his eyes and buttons.

Although Christmas was a little different this year, it didn't stop us celebrating and having fun! We kicked Christmas off with a big party. We had a buffet, virtual entertainment from the wonderful Deborah McCormik, games, films and even an appearance from the Grinch!

Christmas At Bowerfield Court

We had a Christmas art and craft day mainly repairing the nose on our snowman and the antlers on the reindeer and general Christmas arts and craft. A very enjoyable day for the class.

The spirit of Christmas at Bowerfield Court - Peter enjoyed food for the first time in a year on Christmas Day! This was all cleared with the SALT team, Kirsty the home manager sat with him while he enjoyed it. He was so happy!

The Spirit Of Christmas

A great festive atmosphere was enjoyed by residents and staff with a wonderful Christmas Dinner prepared and served by the chef. It was great to see residents enjoying their presents too. The arrival of a special companion pet was a particular talking point for everyone.

Christmas Celebrations At The Wetbourne

Normally we would have visits from our local schools over Christmas so we were so delighted to receive this handmade wreath made by the children of William Bellamy School in Dagenham.

Thank you to all the children and staff of William Bellamy School

Wyndham Hall are having a Christmas Party with a difference this year, after the very different year we have had, so MAD HATTERS TEA PARTY it is.

Mad Hatters Tea Party

We were very excited when these Chocolate Hampers were delivered to Kings Court. They had been kindly donated by Nationwide Building Society.

Chocolate hampers from Nationwide Building Society

We are very fortunate to have such a wonderful community network around us.

Community Christmas

Stourport High School & VIth form college students Jasmine and Hannah, winners of The Wharf Christmas card competition. PC Pat Roberts kindly donated the prizes and we received beautiful Christmas gift boxes full of presents for residents with very little or no family.

Stourport High School & VIth Form College kindness at it's best!.

Staff, residents and families gave generously to our appeal for donations for the Salvation Army to help families less fortunate at Christmas.

food bank troutbeck

Carols By Glowstick with Christmas treats was a big success at The Westbourne.

carols westbourne

Residents at White Rose Lodge have been participating in a daily festive advent quiz this year for the chance of winning chocolates.

Festive Advent Quiz

White Rose Lodge have been busy this December, residents made shoe boxes for the Samaritans shoe box appeal to send gifts to children around the world.

Shoe Box Appeal

Food delivery from Cavendish Court to the food bank at Hazel Grove Baptist Church. We collected lots of Christmas treats to help out those less fortunate.

Food Bank Donations

Having a safe place to connect with friends and family is so important for those living in our homes, and this visiting pod does exactly that!

Abingdon Mayor opens Visitor Pod at Abingdon Court Care Home

This year the local community of Bridlington are coming together creatively for their first Christmas Tree Trail in the theme of ‘Reduce-Reuse-Recycle’. The idea is for people in the local community to use their creativity to produce a Christmas tree using recycled materials.

Bridlington Christmas Tree Trail

Donna McDermott, Care Practitioner at Bowerfield Court, is donating her hair for wigs to be made for people with cancer.

Donna's Charity Cut

Staff and residents have been getting festive with their Christmas crafts. Along with a Christmas wreath for the front door, they have made a Christmas brush family and painted festive pebbles for their pebble snake which is on display at the front of their home.

Christmas Crafts

Staff and residents had such a fun time dressing up as elves for Elf Day - helping to raise money for the Alzheimer's Society. There were definitely a few naughty elves about!

This month we welcomed Katy to the home as an Activity Coordinator and we wanted her to feel welcome. Therefore we created activities that enabled both Katy to get to know our residents but also for our residents to get to know Katy.

Getting to know you with Katy

Staff and residents had a huge celebration, one of our residents turned 103! A beautiful cake was made for everyone to enjoy.

Resident's 103rd Birthday

Residents and staff at Abbey View have decorated the home for Christmas. The areas look stunning and it has brought lots of Christmas cheer to everyone!

Christmas Decorating

Residents were treated to an early Christmas party with fun, games and amazing food, with staff also receiving gifts.

Skell's Christmas Party

Troutbeck care home in Ilkley has donated items which will contribute to the 2020 Christmas foodbank appeal. Items ranging from Selection boxes, Christmas cakes/puddings and hygiene products.

Salvation Army Christmas Food Banl Appeal

Christmas jumper day was enjoyed by many at Kents Hill Care Home; the residents enjoyed an afternoon of tea and cake and all joined in with some festive singing too

Christmas Jumper Day

Merry Christmas from staff and residents at Bowerfield House. We are all getting ready here for Christmas and having lots of fun decorating our Christmas tree.

Bowerfield House Christmas Tree

Residents had a lovely afternoon decorating our Christmas trees lots of reminiscing and smiles – Merry Christmas from residents and staff at Cavendish Court.

Christmas Cavendish

We decorated three trees with staff and residents coming together with ideas and a helping hand, and we think a good job was done by all, many thanks to all.

Christmas Tree Competition

Staff and residents at the Belvedere were busy dressing one of our Christmas trees. Many smiles this afternoon from staff and residents.

Christmas Belvedere

Christmas Westbourne

Our Roast dinner was simply the best, made by a true Yorkshire man (our Chef Gareth) Roasted Lamb cooked to perfection, chantenay carrots glazed in honey, tender cauliflower and delicate peas, topped off with

Christmas Decorating

Dear Cavendish Court

I write to thank the staff at Cavendish Court in Alderley Edge.

Thank You From Relative

Each year it has been left for activities to decorate the home, this year we wanted to shake it up a little.

Brunel House Christmas Decoration Competition

Croft House celebrated Elf Day on Friday 4th December, raising money for Alzheimer’s Society. Everyone had such a good day enjoying lots treats, guess the elf and advent games.

Residents and staff filled the home with laughter all day.

Elf Day at Croft House

Chestnut Court were celebrating after reaching the finals of the national Care Home Heroes Team Award. The award run by the respected industry publication, Care Home Professional, recognised, "...the care professionals who pulled together as a team to not only ensure the safe

Care Home Heroes

Julie our activities lady has made this fabulous cake as a roast dinner. It's amazing with the detail of the vegetables, roast potatoes and the chicken more than the wow factor. Troutbeck residents loved pouring chocolate gravy over the cake that was in a cake gravy pot, can you believe it!

Roast Dinner Cake

We were delighted to support our local School with breakfast donations to ensure no child goes hungry during and donated 25 bags containing cereal bar's, sachet of porridge, pasta tubs, small bags of raisins , carton of Ribena and some crayons and drawing bo

Community Spirit

We indulged in high tea today enjoying our chefs amazing baking skills, we enjoyed cinnamon cake with a cream cheese frosting thoroughly enjoyed by all.

Troutbeck Care Home is constructing a specially designed visitor pod to enable safe and comfortable visits for both residents and families. This will be an addition to our existing virtual and window visits that are already in place.

Troutbeck's Visiting Pod