Welcome to Allingham House. My name is James Bradford and I have worked in the care and retirement sector for the past 5 years.

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. I am very pleased at leading  the wonderful staff team here at Alexandra Court and ensuring the residents here achieve the best possible life in our home.

Monday 18th January was world snowman day, so to celebrate we decorated some biscuits, yo look like melted snowmen!

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. She joined us in a meeting and at the end of the day she came to the home manager and insisted on a pay rise for all the hard work she had done! It was a joy to have her join our team for the day and we look forward to her joining us again! 

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. It was met with mixed feelings but I think it was a great success as many had fond memories of their childhood antics in the snow. Many wanted to touch the snow, some enjoyed the experience and it gave them a chance to reminisce.  

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 very much appreciate your support and wish to say thank you for your kind donation our residents love them! 

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. This was a lovely activity as the residents talked about the birds they like and stories of birds they remembered from when they were younger. Such as certain robins coming to their garden everyday as they are territorial. Or big hawks they had seen swoop to catch prey in a field. 

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. 

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