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.

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.

One of our residents enjoys poetry so we went through all the books she has and chose ones that she can remember and recite. She likes in particular ones that she knows well and often recites them. This gives her a sense of achievement.

Today it snowed so we thought we would take the opportunity and give the residents a feel of the great outdoors by bringing the snowballs inside to them. Thinking that it would bring back memories of wintry walks in the snow and childhood memories.

We have been donated beautiful sensory hand knitted blankets for our residents and we would like to say a big thank you all at the Leyton village craft group.

We had a fun time making our new year 2021 calendars while we discussed our new year resolutions. We decided life is too short to not be excessive with glitter!

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

Celebrating Chocolatiers

The new visiting pod at Croft House Care Home has been created so that residents can enjoy a window visit from their loved ones.

Today we made some bird feeders to place in the garden. The residents helped tie knots in the string and advised me on where to hang the feeders. There was also a bird identifying quiz. The residents knew some of the birds straight away and debated on others.

Birds at The Hawthorns

Heated rollers and nails, we may have no where to go but we always look our best!

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

An enjoyable afternoon of painting tropical fish suncatchers for an upcoming event. Lots of brightly coloured fish are now ready for our next theme day.

Fish Suncatchers

We had a packed house for this afternoons movie 'We Bought A Zoo'.

Residents were keenly gathering straight from lunch to watch this lovely true story

Residents here at Mary Chapman Court, enjoyed a wonderful afternoon of colouring and chatting.

The Putney and Wimbledon Brass Band came to us here at Ashmead. The Band joined us on a chilly Saturday afternoon, playing Xmas carols, much to the delight of our residents, every one looked out of their windows and enjoyed an afternoon full of music and fun.

Mr and Mrs Martin have been married for 70 years they received a card from the queen and enjoyed afternoon tea together, Mr Martin said the secret to a happy marriage is to let the wife do all the talking and we do our best to make each other happy, since the lock down Mr Martin has b

70th Anniversary

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

We had a wonderful visit from Iceland in December delivering 6 bags full of mince pies for staff and residents. They were delicious and we enjoyed them with cream too.

Thank you Iceland.

Community spirit at Rosedale

We were overjoyed when the Community team at Tesco in Catterick arrived at the home with 39 bags with three gifts in each parcel plus, crackers and poinsettias to bring Christmas joy from the team at Catterick Garrison Tesco. The community team raised over £300 for the Resi

Community Spirit

We received a wonderful email on Christmas Eve from three wonderful young ladies, Lacey, Eva and Sienna. We thought you'd enjoy their email.

Hello and happy Christmas Eve to all at Rosedale

Christmas Eve Gift

We received some lovely cards for our residents from Sedgefield Primary School in December. They had spent time drawing and colouring in pictures to send to our residents which they loved.

Sedgefield Primary School

Sainsburys at Sedgefield Manager Nicola and her colleague Sophie called to Willowdene care home to donate a box of Christmas goodies for the staff and residents. The residents at the home were over the moon.

Community Gifts at Willowdene

We received some wonderful cards from St Joseph's Primary school. Each one had a lovely message in from the wonderful school children. There was a card for each resident.

Thank you so much for thinking of us all

Community Christmas

Christmas at Yohden Care Complex is always a magical time. We had two Christmas parties at the home. One in the Lodge and one in the Court so that all residents had a party they enjoyed.

Christmas at Yohden

We had lots of fun for Elf Day here at Water Royd and had a lot of fun dressing up for the residents. There was many activities we had on over the Christmas period at the home and have put up lots of pictures on our Facebook page.

Elf Day at Water Royd

We were delighted to launch our visitors booth in December. It was wonderful to see the families starting to arrive and using the booth to visit loved ones in the warmth. We hope you enjoyed your visits as much as we loved seeing you all.

Visiting Booth at Water Royd

We had a lovely surprise visit from Santa this afternoon, it put a big smile on our residents faces.

Santa visits Rose Lodge

A big thank you to the children of Vane Road school who have made our residents these lovely Christmas cards.

Christmas Cheer from Vane Road School

Huge thank you to Anne for responding to Pam Lovelass article in the Newton News regarding writing to our residents. So much time and effort must of gone into making these stunning hand made cards and each filled with a beautiful message.

Christmas Cards to our Residents

Here at Heeley Bank we believe that if we can't take our residents to the Christmas pantomime, we will bring the pantomime to them. Performed and written by our wonderful staff. We brought to life the story of Cinderella.

Panto comes to Heeley Bank

We know there is nothing more important than family, and in these strange times we want to do what ever we can to bring families together. Which is why we have built our family pod room, keeping families and residents safe, while also bringing everyone together.

Visiting Booth at Heeley Bank

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.

What an absolute delight for all residents and staff. Waking up to a blanket of snow all over was amazing. Residents enjoyed watching the snow fall with one lady saying that it made her feel like a child again. How magical.

The residents at White Rose Lodge decided to send families a homemade calendar for 2021.

Handmade 2021 Calendars

We, the family, really appreciated the card, tree decoration and Mums photo which I took a picture of and sent to all kin, Spain and USA. A photo to show the decoration has been put into service.

Many thanks and a Happy New Year.

Message from a family member.

Family Memeber's Message

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

Santa came to our home, lots and lots of big happy smiles.

Merry Christmas to all.

Visit From Santa

We had a surprise from our local school sending us Christmas card's that the pupils had made, a lovely thought and went down very well with our residents giving us lots of smiles.

Christmas Cards

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.

Jed, one of our long standing residents, enjoyed his Guinness with his Christmas Lunch.

Merry Christmas.

Christmas Drinks

Bowerfield Court are delighted with our first Christmas Day indoor visit. This was followed by many more. Dale's sister and niece have not physically seen him since March, as you can imagine it was very emotional. Fabulous day and visit.

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

We are a firm believer that charity begins at home and here at Field View this year we have been collecting for the Salvation Army Christmas appeal. We were delighted that so many of the staff were able to donate and that we could support such a good cause.

Charity begins in our Home

Big thank you to head office for the lovely gifts for all the staff at Earsdon Grange. We shared these with the residents and enjoyed a lovely afternoon treat with a cup of tea and some home cooked cakes from the kitchen.

Thank You Hampers

The residents enjoyed a beach party at the home in December. We built plenty of sand castles whilst wearing sunglasses to keep the sun out of their eyes. We also had a visit from Marcello ice cream and the residents enjoyed going out to pick up their ice creams.

Marcello Ice Cream Van comes to Earsdon Grange

We had a very kind donation from our local Sainsburys who brought lots of cake, chocolates and mince pies for residents and staff to enjoy. Thank you so much for thinking of us and all of the wonderful gifts which we enjoyed over a cuppa at the home.

Sainsburys brings gifts to Earsdon Grange