Here at Allenbrook Nursing home, we have pleasure to announce and to celebrate, Allenbrook’s twenty five years as a Nursing and Care home this year. We have a full compliment of highly trained qualified staff to provide the essential care for all of our residents & patient’s needs. Complete with our own fully equipped kitchens, laundry, conservatory, patio, terrace and lawned gardens. The whole of our activities programme is designed to be fun, beneficial and rewarding and caters for everyone’s individual requirements.

We have a weekly programme of activities that will keep our residents both occupied and amused throughout the day, in fact it can be said, second to none. Our Residents enjoy and partake in a wealth of interactive activities adapted and formulated for our residents to enjoy and benefit from. They are specifically designed to incorporate all Saints’ Days and Celebrations, the social calendar is all included and we even have been known to have a flutter on the bigger horse racing events. No occasion is ever overlooked.

Art classes, dance movement, relaxation and music appreciation are all on our weekly or monthly programme and along with our new Allenbrook Art gallery, which will be opened next month, this culminates to a very high standard of activities to help suit every single resident. Sensory therapies are also a very important part of our programme, with aromatherapy massages being offered each month, soft touch and fragrance sessions and craft work using textiles, fabric of all textures, natural products, glass, china and wood incorporating and encouraging dexterity of both hands and mind.

Our World travel sessions are very popular, where we are all able to reminisce. Our residents enjoy telling their own stories of their worldly travels and lively conversation springs up, with everyone chipping in their own memoirs. We label our wall chart and see what an interesting life our resident’s have had, in their younger years.

Memories are also brought to life with visitors to Allenbrook bringing in memorabilia; clothing of the 40’s, cooking implements and tools, toys and games. These artefacts always create happy faces and all kinds of fascinating stories are rolling off people’s tongues.

Some of these stories are noted down as we intend, as another activity, to put together all of these as an Allenbrook Memoirs, it will make wonderful reading when completed.

Exercise is also a very important stimulation for our residents, particularly for those who find movement of any description quite difficult. Armchair exercise is offered regularly within our comprehensive programme of activities. There is a regular exercise session along with music and musical instruments. During our exercise games we use beach balls, sensory textured balls, large exercise balls, and silk scarves making exercise fun and colourful. Even the humble bean- bag comes into play, on some of our games such as the duck challenge, duck table and the flowerpot game adding to the fun, and helping with aim, focus and dexterity. These games are played in conjunction with competitive games such as target practice, play your cards right, skittles, darts and netball, but all of our games are constantly being upgraded and reinvented to add variety of fun to everything that we do.

Visiting Allenbrook throughout the months is a plethora of entertainers and visitors offering music, dance and entertainment galore. We have sing-along, easy listening, hip swinging Latino, classical singers and groups and choirs. Music is always a very welcome component to our programmes and looked forward to by all of our residents. Included amongst our regular visitors are local clergy offering Holy Communion services twice each month to residents of all denominations.

We also enjoy regular visits from two local schools; Quinton Church School and Hasbury Primary School when children entertain us by singing seasonal songs each term of the year. These children play a large part in offering intergenerational communication for our residents. This interaction and association with our local schools has further developed whereby small groups of children will visit our residents just to have a chat, or play board games with our residents.

It is always a pleasure and delight for all parties concerned when we open our doors to the community in this way. We also have a very healthy rapport with local schools and colleges offering students placements of work experience when studying Health and Social Care courses. This again is a very busy two-way street where all participants benefit from this interaction, and we have had quite a few success stories where students have gone on to fulfil a career in this very important field within the care sector.

We have been successful in organising wonderful community events, at Allenbrook, such as our now well-known Summer Fete, which takes place in July each year. This event is visited, supported and looked forward to by many local residents and charitable groups, offering a wonderful afternoon out to our residents as well. This is one of several events that we hold throughout the year including an Easter Bonnet Parade, Halloween party Nights, Bank Holiday fun days with mini tombola and raffles throughout the year. Recently we held a Stars in their Eyes performance and have brought it back again in a new show for the holiday time.

It can most honestly be said that there is never a dull moment here at Allenbrook Nursing Home.