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.

We’ve had not one but two furry friends visit us this month, as well as Chip who is now a regular visitor we also had Ernie come to visit. Ernie is a guide dog in training and as well as getting to give lots of fusses the residents asked lots of questions about him and his training.

For this week’s men’s club we visited our in home sweet shop, resident’s were delighted by the selection and picked out some of their favourite sweets and chocolate bars, choosing extras to take back and share with friends.

In Home Sweet Shop

The summer sunshine has brought us all a lot of joy this week. Especially on Friday when we spent the morning and afternoon soaking up the rays. It was nice to have families join us for a nice chat with their loved ones whilst drinking a cup of tea.

As part of this week activities our lovely ladies created artificial centrepieces.

They had a good time showing their creativity skills.

Artificial Centrepieces

The people living with us enjoyed strolling about in the grounds of Gateford Hill Care home. They loved the peaceful surroundings. Afterwards they sat and enjoyed refreshments and snacks. There were lots of conversations, smiles and laughter.

The Gardens at Gateford Hill

We are taking a full advantage of the lovely weather we have here!
We have visited Willen Lake this morning and thoroughly enjoyed some beautiful views of our lake from the nearby café.

Visit to Willen Lake

We had an 80th Birthday to celebrate today at Buckingham House. It was important to the person living us that they got to spend time and celebrate the day with their loved ones.

80th Birthday Celebrations

The people living with us and team joined St. James’ community for their monthly lunch gathering. The people living with us really enjoy the opportunity to get out and socialise with other people. As always the food and service was 5* and was really enjoyed by all.

Local Church Friendship Group

Providing the people living with us an opportunity to have input into their menu at Buckingham House is so important to us.

At least once each week the people living us love to spend the morning baking. Whatever is baked is then served for afternoon tea to everyone living at the home. Today, we are all going to enjoy a Victoria Sponge!

Afternoon Tea baked by the people living with us

A room full of concentration and competitive minds. Scrabble on one table, dominoes on the other, and plenty of residents having a pleasant afternoon together.

Table Top Games

For this afternoon our residents were delighted with a chocolate tasting, from a chocolate fountain to a variety of different chocolate flavours.

They enjoyed some fruits and marshmallow skews dipped in chocolate.

Chocolate Tasting

Earlier in the year several of the people living with us here at Kingsbury Court planted some sunflower seeds indoors.

Sunflower Success

We celebrated Appreciation Day at Allingham House, a special occasion to say thank you to all the staff that works in our home. They give the best of themselves to deliver the best caring and professional experience to our residents everyday.

Appreciation Day

We enjoyed an afternoon of trying different types of chocolate and trying different fruits in the chocolate fountain.

World Chocolate Day At Acorn House

Our Lifestyle Team had the bespoke training module delivered by a qualified staff member from Just Bowl, the new great project that introduce new ways to move and exercises to those people living with us, whilst also involving the wider team and having much fun !

Just Bowl Project

Welcome to our Sweet shop!

Manorhey's Sweet Shop

Last week was a busy week, we enjoyed garden time, especially our glorious roses. We travelled to Canada, jammed to Bon Jovi and Queen, played games and remembered loved family members in reminiscing sessions

A Week at Bowerfield Court

It's Wimbledon Season – our very own balloon tennis was an absolute hit during Wimbledon, some competitiveness, some good agility and hand eye coordination, with of course, lots of fun and laughter! We certainly got our bodies moving in these activity sessions.

Our Oomph exercise class is going really well and is being enjoyed by our residents.

Oomph Exercise Class

Our residents and the staff enjoyed our Spanish night. The food was excellent, it included tapas, paells / crème brulee and chocolate cheesecake.

Making our Residents happy and fulfilling their wishes is what we are all here for at Kents Hill Care Home.

Out to the Garden Centre...

So much fun was had when we did indoor bowling, just a day after receiving an excellent set of bowling equipment. There was so much laughter and frequent cheers from the two teams as they played. The residents named the teams themselves.

Bowling at Gateford Hill

Fathers Day at Hope Green is a colourful celebration!

Fathers Day at Hope Green

In celebration of the races last month, our residents made some hats for the Royal Ascot Race

Royal Ascot Hats

We had a great day shopping at Fleetwoods Freeport. Residents enjoyed the shopping trip, buying some new shoes and clothes, finished off with some refreshments.

PASSED! Camille, one of our newly hired international nurse, recently passed her OSCE exams held in Ulster University. She has been taking shifts for four months now, shadowing the registered nurses and helping with care in Amber Court.

CONGRATULATIONS CAMILLE!

This week we had wine and cheese tasting in the lounge.

We also enjoyed a French themed quiz with prizes!

We took to the skies with paper airplanes in this week’s Men’s Club. Trying our hand at making different styles of paper planes before giving them a test flight, the best part! Lots of smiles and laughter as they soared or dived to the floor.

Congratulations and thank you to all the nurses out there. You do a brilliant challenging role. River View thanked their current nurses as well as our own 98 year old legend of a lady who started her nursing career in the UK at The Royal Berkshire Hospital. Thank you for all your service 🙏

Nurses Day at River View

River View celebrated Carers day with the fabulous team in house last week.

Carers Day at Riverview

Today at Kings Court we had a local entertainer come to sing for everyone living with us. With a great selection of familiar songs to sing along and dance too, everyone had a wonderfully happy afternoon

Afternoon Singalong

A very special visitor arrived to conclude our Platinum Jubilee celebrations in the shape of our Lifestyle Coordinator - Queen Raj!

BY ROYAL APPOINTMENT

Whilst Ladies Day at Royal Ascot was opened by HRH Queen Elizabeth, River View Ladies Day was opened by our very own HM Lizzy Gondo !

Ladies Day Comes to River View

We would like to congratulate our Hospitality Manager, Dammi, for being nominated for the 'Hospitality Hero Award'.

Dammi has worked at River View since Maria Mallaband took over the home in 2017.

Hospitality Hero Nomination

Following on from the

Cake Decorating

River View were really excited and absolutely delighted to recently be able to welcome Boonies Pet Therapy.

Boonies Pet Therapy

June 11th marked HRM The Queens official birthday. We thought it only essential to recognise this celebration around the home with the people who live at River View.

Queen's Birthday Celebrations

Wordy Wednesday brought a challenge to Doreen this week as she chose a kitchen utensil word search. Doreen conferred with her friends for spotting stubborn words but eventually wasn't defeated! Well done!

Wordy Wednesday

Meet our glamorous assistants Bev and Margaret.

When asking for 2 volunteer's the ladies were more than willing to take centre stage.

Spurring our residents on ,a lovely fun Game show took place yesterday.

Thank you ladies.

The people living with us enjoy getting ‘Out & about’ at some time every day (weather permitting) in the vast grounds of Gateford Hill. Everyone enjoyed the fresh air, scenery and nature.

What a way to start our day!. Gentle stretches and core strength exercises with Melanie who is brilliant at motivating and encouraging participation. Yoga balls are proving very popular in these sessions which sees the numbers increasing week on week.

What better way to start our day!

Another cracking afternoon when much fun was had with a spot of outdoor bowls!. 'Just Bowl' is an innovative and exciting activity that encourages individuals of all ages, particularly those over 60 to get active. Recent pilots that took place across several care homes showed that res

The people living with us really enjoyed making the fruit kebabs. It triggered nice memories of when they were children picking fruit from trees and making fruit pies at home with their mums. Other residents also spoke of during the war time when fruit was very scarce.

Being able to express yourself creatively is so important and can be so therapeutic. We got the paints out with some of the people who wanted to get painting and enjoy a creative afternoon. The end results were really lovely.

Some of the people living with us really like to attend the local church which we organise for them. We went over this week and really enjoyed the beautiful weather we had.

Time for Church

We wanted to thank our amazing local fire crew for their support and hard work so we organised them a hamper for their tea room which we hope that they all really enjoy.

And there we have it! George turned 101 today! And of course, there was a celebration party including George’s favourite cake, which he thoroughly enjoyed. We are all very happy that we could celebrate this special day with George!

The Cranleigh Carnival managed by The Lions Club, was as an enormous success within our local community. It was a pleasure to have the opportunity to display our lovely home, together with arts and crafts, prepared by our residents to raise money for Alzheimer’s.

Cranleigh Carnival

We were so thrilled to be joined by our mayor to celebrate the Queens Jubilee at the home. We had some music, refreshments and cake. The Mayor spent sometime with the people living at the home which they really enjoyed.