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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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.
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.
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!
Staff and residents at Strachan House on Craigcrook Road in Blackhall are celebrating receiving exceptional feedback in the home’s customer satisfaction survey. Everyone is as proud as can be after the home scored incredibly highly in all aspects of the survey.
Each year Barchester Healthcare, who own Strachan House, conduct a mammoth customer survey to collate feedback from their 13,800 residents and patients, and their loved ones. The survey is an opportunity to gather the opinions of the people living in Barchester’s homes and hospitals, along with those of their families and loved ones, in order to learn and improve.
Every single piece of feedback given in the survey is considered and acted upon. This year the survey received over 13,000 individual pieces of feedback, all of which are passed on to the relevant home.
An impressive 84% of the residents at Strachan House stated that they would recommend the home to a friend. In the six different areas of the survey covering people, care, environment, activities, dining and communication, the home consistently scored over 80%.
The home’s top score out of the six areas was for the calibre of its staff at 92%, followed by the home’s environment at 89%, and the quality of the care delivered at 88%. All team members are thrilled to have received such brilliant scores.
The report contained many glowing quotes from residents and their loved ones including: “From the start, we been nothing but impressed by the home and the way our dad is cared for” and “the carers’ positive outlook and energy never fails to amaze me. They are all wonderful!”
Staff are all over the moon with the comments they received which mean so much.
Frances Fisher, General Manager at Strachan House, said: “We are delighted that Strachan House received such excellent feedback from our residents and their loved ones.
“The team at Strachan House always strive to provide the best quality person-centred care for everyone who lives here continually going above and beyond to ensure all our residents lead the most fulfilling lives possible. They are all superstars and it is wonderful to see their dedication recognised.”
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, nursing and dementia care, from respite breaks to long term stays.
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.
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.
RESIDENTS AT STRACHAN HOUSE CARE HOME ENJOY CHRISTMAS ACTIVITIES WITH BEAVER VISITORS FROM LOCAL CHURCH
Residents at Strachan House care home, in Edinburgh recently enjoyed Christmas bingo, card making and carol singing with a visiting group of local Beavers from Davidson’s Mains church.
The event, which took place on evenings throughout the week welcomed the group of Beavers to enjoy music, games and activities with residents at the home.
The children and residents were supplied with plenty of Christmas snacks whilst they enjoyed their games and activities and the home now have a beautiful display of hand-crafted Christmas cards to enjoy throughout the season.
General Manager, Frances Fisher of Strachan House care home said: “The residents at our home had a great time enjoying this intergenerational activity.
“The Beavers were able to share with us their stories, crafting abilities and their beautiful singing voices. This event brought so much joy to residents, staff and the Beavers alike”.
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.
As some of you are aware, almost all of our much loved PEP buses were vandalised over last weekend, having their fuel tanks drilled and emptied.
This sadly resulted in having to cancel our transport commitments, which we are extremely sorry and sad about. Thank you to those individuals, family members and organisations for understanding the need to cancel, which has resulted in many of your vital services being cancelled or delayed and additional pressures experienced.
We will stay in touch with all of those involved as things move forward.
Our amazing team here at PEP sprung into action to create our action plan to get us back up and running, which hopefully won’t be too much longer. We will also be looking for more secure, long term parking facilities, if you know or anywhere, please share!
This vandalism has of course been reported to the police, but if anyone knows any information about who may have done this please do get in touch.
I don’t think they realise the conquences and impact of their actions, after all we are a Charity delivering vital services to many vulnerable people, not to mention the financial impact this has caused.
Thank you to everyone who has reached out to support PEP, offering help in many ways. The local community are amazing and we are proud to serve you.
We appreciate that Christmas is just around the corner and wish we were not asking, however any donations to help us recover from the recent vandalism to our buses would be massively appreciated by ourselves as well as the organisations we work alongside 
DON’T DINE ALONE ON CHRISTMAS DAY
Local care home Strachan House in Blackhall is opening its doors to members of the community in a bid to help tackle loneliness this Christmas.
Older community members, who might usually eat alone, are invited to join staff and residents at the home on Christmas Day from 12.30 pm onwards for a free three course meal and a good old natter.
Diners will be treated to a tasty Christmas lunch in the home’s dining room. Guests will have a chance to mingle and get into the festive spirit with music and tales of Christmas’s gone by as well as taking part in the festive cheer throughout the day.
The ‘Don’t Dine Alone’ initiative was launched by Barchester Healthcare as a way to reach out to isolated or vulnerable members of the local community.
The company has its own Charitable Foundation, a registered charity that gives grants to older people and other adults with a disability or mental health problem to help combat loneliness and enable people to connect with their local communities.
The home’s talented Head Chef Paul Dow will be creating an array of delicious dishes all cooked from scratch using fresh produce for diners to enjoy.
Fran Fisher, General Manager at Strachan House said: “Loneliness and isolation can have a huge impact on people, especially older members of the community.
“We want all our neighbours to know that they are welcome to come and dine with us here at Strachan House,, we very much hope that anyone feeling lonely will join us for a hot meal on Christmas day”.
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 from respite breaks to long term stays.
