Activities & Daily Life

In our experience, providing excellent care goes hand in hand with providing our residents with stimulation and lots of fantastic fun to fill their days. We have two lively professional activity coordinators at the home who put a great deal of energy into finding out what our residents would like to do and then organising events and activities around them. The emphasis is on actively listening to residents first and devising a suitable programme, not squashing residents into a fixed calendar of events.

Activities can be small things like taking two close friends out to the garden for a private chat and a cup of tea or it can be a major event like the annual fete.

Activities are an intrinsic part of life at Laurel Care Home. Our ethos is simple, relax and have fun amongst friends or have some one on one time. Residents enjoy coming to activities and participating or just watching. They are given a calendar at the beginning of the month so they know what to look forward to. It gives Residents a reason to get up in the morning. Our Activities Team will get to know each resident individually and try to focus the activities around what their past interests are so everyone can enjoy their time doing what they love. To see residents laughing and enjoying themselves is the greatest reward. We now have our own Laurel Care Home vehicle which we use to take residents out for a drive twice a week. It accommodates 2 seated passengers and 1 wheelchair passenger and makes for a fun and jolly trip out to the beach, forest or sometimes around Southampton recalling landmarks and memories. All residents who are able to travel have the opportunity to have a trip out and the activities team share this round and vary the destinations.

The activities our residents enjoy include:

• Baking day
• Beach day (including crabbing and pub visit)
• Flower arranging
• Bingo
• Board Games
• Puzzles
• A range of visiting entertainers
• Film night
• Men’s day
• Planned physical mobility sessions
• Annual Fete
• Knitting & Chatting
• Arts & Crafts

Daily Life at Laurel Care Home:

Our approach is simple, we challenge our staff to deliver our mission – “We aspire to be a home that you would recommend to a member of your own family”. Since we do little or no advertising, without recommendations by previous clients and their families we wouldn’t be here today.

So we have great, well qualified professional staff who:

• Recognise everyone of our residents is different with their own identity and personality
• Work hard to create a sense of community, involving families and residents in all major decisions
• Help families make the move by encouraging personal changes to rooms
• Are proactive in managing health and well-being and use appropriate community experts
• Help individuals and families ensure a good end of life
• Commit to professional and personal improvement
• Keep a positive attitude at work – residents live where we chose to work

CQC Inspector

‘The registered manager told us that the vision of the service was to provide a home environment that was… “The best place to live, and the best place to work”. Staff shared this vision and told us that they felt the registered manager and provider understood about valuing the staff so that they were then motivated to do their best. One staff member said, “We try to make this the best place for people and we have the full support from the managers to do this”.’