GrumbleSmiles

THIS IS THE LAST OF A SERIES OF BLOGS DESCRIBING SOME OF THE HISTORY AND CULTURE OF THE EXTRACARE CHARITABLE TRUST.  THIS WAS THE ORGANISATION I FOUNDED AND WORKED FOR FROM 1987 THROUGH TO THE TIME I RETIRED IN 2010.  I HOPE IT WILL INSPIRE OTHERS TO LOOK AT NEW WAYS OF LIVING IN LATER LIFE.

For other blogs in this series, click on “ExtraCare Traditions” in the TAG CLOUD.

In the mid 1990’s our programme of activities was already well established in all our nursing homes and extracare housing schemes.  Some of our managers and residents wanted to be more ambitious and we tentatively sent a first group of people to the Calvert Trust in Devon, which is an outward bound centre.  Given the level of frailty of many of our residents, we weren’t sure how much they would be able to accomplish but the centre is staffed by some excellent instructors and all of our first group rose to all of our challenges – climbing, sailing, canoeing, riding, abseiling, swimming and zip line.  All came away with a great sense of achievement having done things they would never have imagined they could do.  This is very much thanks to the brilliant instructors and the great ExtraCare staff teams.

This first group gave us the confidence to take over the whole of the centre for several weeks of every year and send 50 people at a time to Calvert Trust.  Over the years several thousand people of all ages and abilities followed in the footsteps of this first group.  It was an inspirational place to visit and a very emotional experience to see the smiles and tears on residents’ faces.

When residents came back from Calvert Trust, they couldn’t stop talking about the experience and influenced many of their friends to believe they could try out new ideas and face new challenges with confidence.

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The photographs in the above gallery show some of the things people accomplished.  The weeks were challenging but also great fun and included many more things than just the outward bound physical activities:-

Camping out on Exmoor, sketching at Sir Francis Chichester’s House, driving shire horse driven wagons, orienteering in a forest, ghost hunting in the dead of the night, following nature trails.

Entertainment included barn dancing, professional singers, operatic performances and Christmas concerts.

Over the years a number of celebrities came along to support what we were doing.  Geoff Capes, the Olympic Shot Putter and World’s Strongest Man, was a great supporter of our work.  At the time of the TV Gladiators programme, we managed to get Gladiator Scorpio to come and challenge one of our residents – Wicked Wilf – to abseiling and climbing.  Wilf was nearly 90 at the time and had great fun dressing up in a Lycra superman outfit.

Many of our residents ended up being interviewed on local TV and radio when they returned home.

These were truly life changing experiences and opened the door to a much more positive outlook on later life.

THIS IS ONE OF A SERIES OF BLOGS OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS DESCRIBING SOME OF THE HISTORY AND CULTURE OF THE EXTRACARE CHARITABLE TRUST.  THIS WAS THE ORGANISATION I FOUNDED AND WORKED FOR FROM 1987 THROUGH TO THE TIME I RETIRED IN 2010.  I HOPE IT WILL INSPIRE OTHERS TO LOOK AT NEW WAYS OF LIVING IN LATER LIFE.

For other blogs in this series, click on “ExtraCare Traditions” in the TAG CLOUD

For as long as ExtraCare has been in existence, we have always given out awards.  Cups, medals, ribbons, certificates, plaques and eventually ExtraCare “OBE’s” which, in our case, stands for the Order of the Best of ExtraCare.  These were given to residents, volunteers and staff and our view was that everyone deserves recognition for their skills and talents.  Our job was to create as many opportunities as possible for people to demonstrate them positively.

The photograph above is one such awards event held at Turners Music Hall in Northampton.  Representatives of staff and residents from all over the ExtraCare empire came dressed up for a spectacular day out.  The awards were presented by many of the organisations who had donated funds to us over the years and also by many of the local authorities and health authorities that we worked with.  As well as being very enjoyable for the residents, awards ceremonies proved to be a great showcase for our work.

Turners was a great venue run by a former fairground showman with a great collection of vintage cars but also a centre piece of a working carousel which was great fun for the residents.

We went on to win many national awards for our work and this continues to this day.

The award ceremonies were usually held in posh London hotels and many residents and staff used it as an opportunity to also do some shopping or go to the theatre.

The awards we won included Housing Design Awards, The Elderly Accommodation Council Awards and the National Housing Federation Awards.

At the time I was writing this blog the December issue of the ExtraCare magazine – “Extralife”  was published.   The front and centre pages reported that SIX of EatraCare Charitable Trusts projects have won this years Elderly Accommodation Council “Housing for Older People Awards”.   These awards are all the more special because they are judged  on the residents own assessment of their schemes.

THIS IS ONE OF A SERIES OF BLOGS OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS DESCRIBING SOME OF THE HISTORY AND CULTURE OF THE EXTRACARE CHARITABLE TRUST.  THIS WAS THE ORGANISATION I FOUNDED AND WORKED FOR FROM 1987 THROUGH TO THE TIME I RETIRED IN 2010.  I HOPE IT WILL INSPIRE OTHERS TO LOOK AT NEW WAYS OF LIVING IN LATER LIFE.

For other blogs in this series, click on “ExtraCare Traditions” in the TAG CLOUD

From the very outset in ExtraCare, we were trying to do things differently and this meant we had to build a very strong culture which could be easily understood by residents and staff.  Our overall goal was to deliver “Better Lives for Older People”. 

The good thing was we didn’t see ourselves as a group of professionals with all the answers.  We knew what we didn’t know and therefore we had to build our ideas by consulting our residents.

In the early years we started this thought process with the Directors and Managers in regular monthly meetings.  These were then followed up with team briefings to all the staff in a regular monthly “Newsround” where I visited each home and scheme and briefed the morning, afternoon and nightshift staff.  This was a considerable commitment but it paid dividends in terms of everyone being aware of what we were trying to do, whilst at the same time giving me rapid feedback on the issues that were in the residents’ and staffs’ minds.

Once a year we drew all this together in an “Annual Away Day” with all the Directors and Managers.  The processes we used were facilitated by an excellent Change Man Consultant – Tony Turrell.  We talked about our core values and surveyed staff and residents for their views which we then discussed at the Away Day.  Talking over dinner I commented to Tony that it would be good to do this for all the staff so that they could all be immersed in the cultural discussions.  He said it would be a bit like a “Sheep Dip” and ever after the title stuck.  For several years going forward we held large scale training sessions for all the staff and later on included residents as well.

The culmination of this stage of our Change Management process was a “Sheep Dip” event held at Allesley Hall, which was one of our nursing homes.  It was based on the 1930’s and everyone came dressed up and celebrated the achievements of the residents and staff through the year.  The team in the photo above were led by our Activities Manager – Mike Hallam.  Mike brought an amazing imagination to all of our activities and a great level of fun.  He was ably assisted by a talented team of entertainers and creative people.  Two of the most popular were Bill and Jan Butcher who are on the right in the photo above.

One of the residents on the day demonstrated her skills at reading tea leaves.  Many other skills were shown on the day including choirs, writing, painting, cake making, all of which indicated our desire to focus on lifestyle opportunities rather than just the health, care and risk aversion focus that tended to be emphasised by the regulators.

We eventually dropped the “Sheep Dip” title but by that time the culture focused on creating “Better Lives for Older People” was very much embedded in our approach.

THIS IS ONE OF A SERIES OF BLOGS OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS DESCRIBING SOME OF THE HISTORY AND CULTURE OF THE EXTRACARE CHARITABLE TRUST.    THIS WAS THE ORGANISATION I FOUNDED AND WORKED FOR FROM 1987 THROUGH TO THE TIME I RETIRED IN 2010.          I HOPE IT WILL INSPIRE OTHERS TO LOOK AT NEW WAYS OF LIVING IN LATER LIFE.

For other blogs in this series, click on “ExtraCare Traditions” in the TAG CLOUD

Gardening was always quoted as one of the most popular former past-times of our residents when we started the ExtraCare Charitable Trust.   Because initially we began by developing nursing homes, gardening was still more of a lost art to our residents, who were only able to have not much more than a pot plant on their bedside table.   When we started building extracare housing, we were able to provide outdoor balconies to the flats and patio and garden areas on the ground floor accommodation.  We were also able to build communal greenhouses into most of our schemes.

As a start to our activities programme, we always thought that gardening held a lot of potential interest to many residents.    One of the first things we did was hold a “Gardener’s Question Time” at Ryton Gardens in Coventry.    This event included a number of professional gardeners giving advice on all sorts of gardening activities from vegetable gardening to flower gardens and greenhouse gardening.

We always had a fun element to what we did and so our Activities Manager, Mike Hallam and I, went to the Wholesale Fruit and Veg Market in Coventry at 5 am on the morning of the event and bought a job lot of flowers, fruit and vegetables.   When we got to Ryton Gardens we built a stage set modelled on the children’s TV programme, Bill and Ben The Flowerpot Men.    Mike and I dressed up in sack cloth and flower pots and hid, crouched down, in two large crates, while the serious questioning got started.   We were surrounded by an allotment stage set of melons, carrots, cabbages, turnips, parsnips, pumpkins, pears, apples, oranges, bananas, grapefruit, grapes……………. you name it and we bought it.   The whole of the backdrop was decorated with trees and flowers – dahlias, daffodils, chrysanthemums, roses, tulips, geraniums and the centrepiece was a giant weed, which actually was my 8-month pregnant secretary in a green leotard.  Susan was a great sport!

After some serious questions from the professional gardener’s panel, Mike and I popped up out of the crates and started our own question time quiz aimed at the audience, based on another children’s TV programme, Crackerjack.    Every time somebody gave a correct answer to our questions, we threw them cabbages and some quality fruit and veg from the stage set.    It was great fun and by the end of the afternoon everyone was sent home with a party bag full of fruit and veg, including lots of packets of seeds to enable them to get started on gardening.

This event was way back in the 1980’s and ever after gardening took off as a major activity for many people in our nursing homes and extracare housing schemes.   In the nursing homes they had lots more pot plants and they also did hanging baskets and window boxes and had “gardening in tights” afternoons.    In the extracare housing schemes, as well as using the large communal greenhouses, residents were able to do their own gardening in their own patio and balcony areas.    In a few schemes they were also able to create small allotment areas.

In each housing scheme and nursing home, all these activities were promoted by “Gardening Captains” drawn from both the staff and the resident volunteers.    This culminated in an annual “Garden in Bloom” show with photos and displays of residents’ work.    Up to 500 people from all the homes and schemes attended.   The entries were judged by celebrity TV gardener Howard Drury and the successful gardeners were awarded with certificates, medals and cups, along the lines of the Chelsea Flower Show.

I am pleased to say the event is still going strong today and has been emulated by many other organisations.