In 2010 Rose Lodge has become an active and social home (‘a nice social club where you can stay the night’ and we intend to largely continue with the activities programme we established, and evolve the programme on an incremental basis 2011/12.

• We will continue with structuring our activities programme around weekly recurring activities, as this helps some residents to orient themselves around the week.
• We will continue with the concept of activity clubs for activities such as cooking, gardening, singing, crafts, and drama. These clubs encourage small groups of residents to socialise on a regular basis, retain and develop skills, and establish friendships and camaraderie among residents. One such club is a choir which we have not yet got established as we have unsuccessfully tried to have the choir led by an entertainer. In 2011/12 we will seek out someone more akin to a ‘choir master’ with a view to properly establish a choir at Rose Lodge.
• We will continue with using both a dedicated activities coordinator as well as a number of external people as we feel this provides for a richness of skills and relationships which we feel benefits the residents. We will continue to identify members of the care team who are interested in bringing specific skills to resident activities, and include this in our activities programme.
• We will continue to encourage friends and relatives to visit often and we think our activities programme provides a good focus for such visits. To help establish contacts and support between relatives we will organise an annual social evening for friends and family members.
• We will continue to encourage contacts between the wider community and residents at Rose Lodge, through outings, open days, art exhibitions etc. One special project planned for next year is a vegetable gardening project with children of the Beacon school. Such inter-generational mixing not only provides real enjoyment to our residents but also helps to increase understanding of dementia in our younger generation.