Category: Blackhall

Strachan House residents celebrate National Scrabble Day

It was dictionaries at the ready at Strachan House care home in Blackhall, where super-competitive residents were keen to get involved in National Scrabble Day.

Staff and residents at Strachan House care home decided to embrace their love of scrabble and share it with others.

Strachan House host a scrabble club daily in the service after a few of the residents bonded over their mutual love for the game.

Resident’s attending scrabble club couldn’t believe their luck when the team informed them that it was National Scrabble Day.

Zoe Bowers the Activities Co-ordinator at the home commented: “Our residents all love to play Scrabble, we regularly have a game on the go and we love a good debate about what is and isn’t a word – thank goodness we always have our trusty dictionary on hand to settle things! 

“Some of our residents have the most amazing vocabularies!”

Fran Fisher General Manager at the home, said: “It has been a brilliant day and we have all enjoyed playing lots of scrabble, it is amazing what you learn when you get together round a Scrabble board.

“We would all love to have other scrabble clubs reach out so we can take this competition up a notch”. 

Strachan House is run by Barchester Healthcare, one of the UK’s largest care providers, which is committed to delivering high-quality care across its care homes and hospitals. Strachan House provides nursing care, residential care, respite care.

Enrolling now: Edinburgh Dance Academy offers free taster lessons

Edinburgh Dance Academy, recently voted highest ranked dance school in the UK and Ireland are ENROLLING NOW!!!

All of our taster lessons are free to make sure that we are the right fit for any dancer, and this month we are offering …

✨ TWO WEEKS FREE AT ALL EDA STUDIOS ✨

We offer classes in: Pre School Dance, Teenie Toes (parent and child), RAD Ballet, Tap, Jazz, Competition Teams, Contemporary, Commercial, Acro, Turns, Limbering, Body Conditioning, Mini Musical Theatre, Progressing Ballet Technique, & our Everybody Dance Now (ASN class)!

We would love to have you join our amazing dance family!

For more information please get in touch.

Email hello@eda.scot to book your free taster lesson now!

Local Care Home takes a trip down memory lane

STRACHAN HOUSE RESIDENTS VISIT WEE MUSEUM OF MEMORY

Residents from Strachan House care home have recently enjoyed a trip to the wee museum of memory in Leith to take a trip down memory lane. The museum which brings to life objects from the not so distant past is a perfect way for the Strachan House residents to reconnect and be nostalgic about days gone by. 

Following a recent meeting whereby residents and their loved ones expressed a wish to have more dementia outings added to our programme we were blessed to find this museum. 

General Manager Fran Fisher was blown away with the amount of things that the residents were able to view and engage with, stating: “It’s amazing that our residents are able to see things that they used and enjoyed when they were young, the wedding dress was a particular favourite of both myself and the two ladies lucky enough to go on the trip”. 

Strachan House care home is run by Barchester Healthcare, one of the UK’s largest care providers, which is committed to delivering personalised care across its care homes and hospitals. Strachan house provides residential care, nursing care and dementia care for 83 residents from respite care to long term stays.

Knitted Bible Exhibition at Blackhall St Columba’s next month

We are excited to bring this exhibition to Scotland for only the 2nd time in its history. Please look at the notice to see when it is available to see and come along with some friends.

We hope to see you here.

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Local Care Home residents enjoy Pal-entine’s event!

CELEBRATING FUN AND FRIENDSHIP 

Residents at Strachan House care home, in Blackhall enjoyed a fun, friendship-filled take on Valentine’s Day, enjoying their very first “Pal-entines” experience. Using a speed friendship format residents met staff, residents and others to chat about their interests in order to gain more insight into likes and dislikes of those living and working in the home. 

Honouring friendships and meaningful moments is something Strachan House strive to do and it was beautiful to see everyone connecting on a personal level.

Staff were asked questions about their favourite topics at school, their hobbies and about their children and residents were able to share what they’d like to do more of and met others with similar interests. Plans were made by the amazing activities team to ensure many of the hobbies discussed were added to our activitie’s planner.

Fran Fisher General Manager at Strachan House Care Home said: “What a great day we had. It was so special to bring everyone together from all different units and departments to have a beautiful afternoon of friendship.

“We wanted to move away from the typical valentine’s day celebration focussing more on what love means to us. At Strachan house we’re blessed to have so many wonderful people from different backgrounds and walks of life and it was an amazing way to celebrate everyone together”. 

Marion Cooper, a resident at the home was excited to be involved and had her questions to ask pre-prepared, we spoke German, laughed about our poor French speaking abilities and we even had the drinks trolley out free flowing with prosecco.

 Strachan House Care Home is run by Barchester Healthcare, one of the UK’s largest care providers, which is committed to delivering high-quality care across its care homes and hospitals. 

Strachan House Care home provides residential care, nursing care and dementia care for up to 83 residents.

Care Home residents touch the future with new interactive touch pad

Barchester Healthcare care home Strachan House located in Blackhall has added to their services with a new high-tech touch pad at the home (writes Strachan House Care Home’s JANE LONGSTAFF).

A care home which provides expert care to residents with mobility restrictions as well as those living with dementia, the sensory trolley has allowed residents of all capacities and mobilities to enjoy different, sensory experiences without even leaving their rooms.

The specially-adapted, fully-accessible display features immersive technology, which enables users to move shapes, colours and objects through gesture and movement. The touch pad has a number of features designed to help those suffering with with dementia to relax; the cart also helps de-escalate stressful and upsetting situations experienced by those suffering with different forms of the disease.

The unit is designed with a number of key features that include: a 4K screen which allows residents to take immersive voyages anywhere in the world, a variety of dementia-friendly apps which allow multi-sensory experiences, a virtual piano, a 3D chess set and other virtual games, large piece jigsaws and other activities for residents with mobility restrictions.

The 65” screen allows residents with visual difficulties to participate in activities they would otherwise be unable to see.

Happy 15th Anniversary, NEN blog!

NEN PUBLISHED OUR FIRST BLOG POST ON THIS DAY IN 2011

The very first NEN blog post was published on this day in 2011. The post read:

Hello, and welcome to the brand new NEN blog.

For those of you not already familiar with the newspaper, we are a local community paper serving the North Edinburgh community. We’ve been here for over thirty years.

This blog, along with our new Facebook page and Twitter stream, represents our first foray into the world of social media.  We really want to encourage more participation, more questions and ideas from the North Edinburgh community – both online and offline – and hope that these new tools will help us to do that.

We already have a good website, where you can always find the latest edition of the printed newspaper. The blog won’t be replacing that, but will instead be there to show people the latest news about the area, and also to help us cover the current funding crisis we are facing as an organisation.

Above all, we want to include your input on the blog – be it ideas for stories, comments, pictures and events. So get in touch!

The NEN’s website was sadly deleted when funding ceased but our social media presence continues on both Twitter and Facebook and the blog is still going strong with 10 – 12 posts daily.

2025 was the NEN blog’s busiest ever year with 36,000 visitors. As I write this we’ve published more than 38,000 posts – all of these remain accessible online – and we’re currently on a run of publishing on 2749 consecutive days.

When the NEN office in Crewe Road North closed much of the NEN archive material was lost, but thankfully some of our picture library was salvaged and can now be found at granton:hub (Madelvic House), where the volunteer archive team has also collated all remaining hard copies of the North Edinburgh News newspaper.

Hopefully, between the physical archive and the NEN blog, you can find all you need to know about our community’s rich history – and we’re adding to that history every day!

B-I-N-G-O!

Strachan House Care Home residents have a trip to Club 3000 Bingo

Residents and staff from Strachan House Care Home in Blackhall were in for a treat with a visit to the Club 3000 Bingo hall after residents asked to take their bingo skills out into the community.

Residents from the home were accompanied by the life enrichment staff team, they had an amazing time with 1 resident even winning one of the games bringing home £16. Ivy, one of the residents who hasn’t been to the bingo for many years said she was so excited to go and would love to go back.

Ivy refused to share her winnings with the team, sadly! 

General Manager, Fran Fisher said: “Our residents and staff had a wonderful time at the Bingo, it’s something we often play here particularly on our first-floor community so it was a real treat to go out and play with other members of the local community.

“We do our best to provide a wide range of activities and entertainment at Strachan House as part of the lifestyle enrichment programme for residents, and this was one of our favourites!”

Strachan House care home is run by Barchester Healthcare, one of the UK’s largest care providers, which is committed to delivering personalised care across its care homes and hospitals. Strachan House provides nursing and dementia nursing care for  83 residents from respite care to long term stays.

Strachan House has built up an excellent reputation within its local community for regularly holding events and activities for its residents and surrounding neighbours.

Don’t Dine Alone: Strachan House Care Home opens it’s doors to lonely older people on Christmas Day

Strachan House Care home opened its doors to a number of people from the community to help tackle loneliness. They invited anyone who would usually dine alone to join them on Christmas day for fun, festivities and food. 

Diners were treated to a tasty Christmas lunch  in the home’s dining room. Guests had a chance to engage with residents, staff and visitors while enjoying their food, they even had a visit from the big man himself. The guests came from all over Edinburgh to enjoy the day with others and banish loneliness at Christmas time.

The home’s Head Chef produced a range of dishes to cover varied individual dietary needs and preferences, so diners were able to eat to their fill as they were served a beautiful Christmas Dinner that consisted of Turkey and all the trimmings.

The ‘Don’t Dine Alone’ initiative was launched by care provider Barchester Healthcare as a way to reach out to isolated or vulnerable members of their local communities.

Barchester Healthcare is also behind Barchester’s Charitable Foundation, which is a registered charity that gives grants to older people and other adults with a disability to help combat loneliness and enable people to be active and engaged in the communities where the Barchester care homes operate.

Frances Fisher  General Manager at Strachan House who visited the service said: “The day was a great success. It was a great effort from my team.

“They are always keen to do more to help those who feel lonely or cut off from the rest of the community”. 

Strachan House care home is run by Barchester Healthcare, one of the UK’s largest care providers, which is committed to delivering personalised care across its care homes and hospitals.

 Strachan House provides residential care, nursing care and dementia care for 83 residents from respite care to long term stays.