Tag: Barchester Healthcare

Care Home invites local community to Open Day

Strachan House  in Edinburgh will be opening their doors to the local community for an open door event complete with free refreshments on Saturday 19th August.

Taking place between 10am-4pm guests will be able to enjoy a freshly prepared buffet by the home’s Head Chef whilst taking the opportunity to meet the General Manager Gordon Philp and his fantastic team. Why not allow them to take you on a tour of the home and see everything the home has to offer? In the afternoon visitors will have the opportunity to enjoy a relaxed afternoon tea and ask any questions they may have.

The Strachan House team will be on hand to answer any queries that they may have. A warm welcome awaits every visitor and a free goodie bag upon leaving will ensure that everyone will have a little something to remember their day with us by.

Gordon Philp, General Manager at Strachan House says: “I’m excited about welcoming new visitors and existing friends of the home to our open day.

“Looking for care can be a little bit daunting, but our team here at Strachan House will do all we can to provide all of our guests with the guidance and support they may need, and answer all of their questions, big or small.

“Our open day is a great chance to enjoy everything the home has to offer in a homely and friendly setting- hope to see you all there!”

Our varied life enrichment programme keeps residents active, and provides a daily choice of engaging physical, mental and spiritual activities tailored to residents’ interests and abilities. 

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.

Fun-filled Fathers Day at local Care Home

Residents at Strachan House in Blackhall enjoyed an Afternoon Tea and photoshoot with their loved ones on Sunday in celebration of Father’s Day. 

With the lovely warm weather residents were able to enjoy meeting up with loved ones in the home’s garden over afternoon tea freshly prepared by the home’s talented chefs.

Throughout the afternoon the residents and their children were then offered a photo shoot session to capture the special moment with a keepsake photo of their day together. 

Gordon Philp, General Manager of the home, said: “We’ve all had a wonderful day today welcoming friends and family into the home.

“Occasions like Father’s Day are so important, it was fantastic to have such a lovely gathering with our residents and their loved ones all together enjoying the sunshine.”

Gerry Smith, resident at Strachan House said: “I’ve had a great time celebrating with my daughter,it has been so lovely to see them and spend some quality time together. 

“Father’s Day is such a special day, I’m so pleased we were all able to celebrate together.”

Strachan House Care Home’s varied life enrichment programme keeps residents active and provides a daily choice of engaging physical, mental and spiritual activities tailored to residents’ interests and abilities.

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.

Singing Out at Strachan House!

Care home residents form new community choir

Residents and guests at Strachan House Care Home in Blackhall are looking forward to hitting the high note with their own community innovative choir.

Working with a local charity Forget Me Notes the choir hopes to engage their intergenerational community and create a group where the affected by Dementia have a place to still express themselves through music and song together. 

Local residents from Strachan House Care Home will practice many a varied song that allows them to take a trip down memory lane. The Choir will get together once a month with people from the community joining in and all performing together.

The Blackhall Primary School choir will also come along making it a great session of intergenerational fun too.

The idea came about when Mandy Head of Activities at Strachan House made contact with Alan the founder of  Forget Me Notes, a local charity that engages those affected by Dementia and other conditions in offering group music and song came together to discuss building a choir from a care home into the community.

“We want to demonstrate that being in a care home doesn’t mean life stops. In fact it’s just getting started. Our aim was to promote inclusion, and invite our community to have the opportunity to be part of something special.

“The choir is an arm that reaches into the community and touches those affected by isolation or loneliness and delivers a safe network of friends and support.

“This choir literally hits all the right notes!”

The choir practice will be held every second Friday of the month at 10.45am at Strachan House and will be open to all who would like to come along.

The hospitality team at the home will also provide a spread of sweet and savoury treats for guests to enjoy during their get together.

Alan said: “We are really looking forward to being part of this new and exciting project.”

General Manager, Gordon Philp said, “Our residents and guests always love a sing along together, so we are very proud of this new innotive and welcoming everyone from our community to join in our choir” 

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 celebrate Easter in style

Staff and residents at Barchester’s Strachan House care home in Blackhall celebrated Easter with a whole host of different activities including an Easter Egg Hunt, hatching duck eggs, afternoon Easter tea for the residents and local community and Easter baking sessions.

Good Friday saw residents at Strachan House enjoy an eggs-tensive range of Easter activities, from an Easter Bonnet parade, egg painting and rolling, to enjoying live entertainment.

Easter Sunday saw residents also tuck in to a delicious tradional Easter lunch prepared by the home’s head chef Paul Gow after hosting a wonderful Easter egg hunt in the beautiful gardens of Strachan House. And if there was any more room from all that chocolate then there was an afternoon tea to relax with amongst family and friends!

General Manager Gordon Philp said “As always, we’ve all been looking forward to Easter. It’s such a lovely time of year – the residents love all the colourful Easter eggs and huge selection of Easter themed activities we had on offer.

“It’s really been an eggs-cellent few days!” 

Muriel who is 102 years old and a resident at Strachan House said: “It has been so lovely to spend time with our families and friends this Easter, though like every Easter, I think I’ve eaten too much chocolate!

” It was so wonderful to see everyone go to so much effort. I have really enjoyed having the ducks hatch and spending time playing with them”

Our varied life enrichment programme keeps residents active, and provides a daily choice of engaging physical, mental and spiritual activities tailored to residents’ interests and abilities. 

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.

Local Care Home goes quackers at Easter surprise!

 Strachan House care home in Blackhall is full of fluffy mischief on the run up Easter period!

Residents at Strachan House were pleasantly surprised to see 5 duck eggs arrive on the 4th April just in time to see them hatch for Easter. Children and relatives all throughout the day watched with the residents together as they witnessed the tiny lives come into the world.

Mandy Head of Activities said: “Sharing moments like these together on an intergenerational level is so touching.

“Making and sharing memories young and old is something we cherish here at Strachan House” 

General Manager Gordon Philp said: “Our residents have really enjoyed their unusual visitors at Strachan House.  We knew that having the hatchlings here would be a bit of fun for all our residents, especially as some find it difficult to go on many outings in our minibus. 

“We are always looking for new activities for the residents and over the Easter period we have seen the enjoyment and the therapeutic influence that the ducks have had on our residents. We can’t wait to see them grow.”

Resident Alex Laird was very excited and touched by watching the ducklings hatch: “As a child I used to love all the animals on the nearby farm.

“Easter has been so very enjoyable so far and it has been wonderful to be part of something special watching new little lives come into the world at Easter.”

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 home’s and hospitals. 

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

Resident Proves She Is On Pointe At Swan Lake 

Resident, Sandy Alexander a 95 year old lady at Strachan House had always wanted to return to watch the ballet so staff at the home made her wish a reality.

Sandy was an accomplished ballet dancer in her younger years and fondly talks of her younger dancing days mainly in Rugby, Warwickshire.

Sandy Alexander has lived at Strachan House for a number of years and is beloved by staff and residents alike. Staff at the home were delighted to be a part of making her dream come true, as they knew how much it meant to her, and they all wanted to be there to see the smile on Sandy’s face as she was surprised with a trip to watch Swan Lake performed by the Birmingham Royal Ballet at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh.

Staff first found out about Sandys dream as she had always spoke about her time as a ballet dancer. She takes part in many exercise classes at the home and it was clear how much she loved being a dancer with her moves and chat about how she was On Pointe.

Ever since learning about Sandy’s passion they have been dedicated to helping her achieve it her dream of returning to the ballet. Sandywas also accompanied by staff, who were there in support of this momentous occasion.

In response to this wonderful surprise, Sandy said: “It was amazing and I never thought I’d ever see the ballet again. The powerful music and dancers just filled me with memories that came flooding back of my time preforming. It truly was an amazing surprise and one I won’t forget”

Gordon Philp, General Manager at the home, said: “We want everyone we care for to know how important they are to us here at Strachan House. It was so nice to see how happy Sandy was – and the staff loved being a part of this as well.”

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.

Strachan House residents paint their Gratitude to an iconic artist

Staff and residents at Barchester’s Strachan House care home in Blackhall got creative celebrating the birthday of one of the greatest post-impressionist artists of all time, Vincent Van Gogh, on 30 March. 

Van Gogh was born in 1853 Groot-Zundert in the Netherlands and he created some of the most famous paintings in the world.  

A prolific artist, Van Gogh’s work was notable for its beauty, emotion and colour.  His paintings have been hugely influential since his death, however during his lifetime Van Gogh struggled with poor mental health, he was virtually unknown and remained poor.  He completed more than 2,100 works consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolours, drawings and sketches.

Staff and residents spent the afternoon learning about Van Gogh’s life and his distinct style of painting, then tried their hand at recreating his famous sunflowers in a vase painting. Strachan House thought this was an important piece as Van Gogh himself called the piece “GRATITUDE”

Jimmy a resident at the local care home said “what an amazing day learning some facts I never knew about the artist. The art session in the afternoon was a time for me to be able to be expressive through attempting to recreate the famous sunflower picture”

General Manager, Gordon Philp said: “We have had a fascinating day finding out all about Van Gogh, he was such a talent and created some absolutely beautiful paintings. 

“Many of our residents love to paint and they really enjoyed discussing their favourites amongst his works and trying to recreate his techniques.”

Marion Cooper, a resident, said: “We have had such a lovely day recreating one of his works. You don’t know how relaxing it is and I never thought I was much of an artist until today”

Our varied life enrichment programme keeps residents active, and provides a daily choice of engaging physical, mental and spiritual activities tailored to residents’ interests and abilities.

 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.

Local care home goes green on St Patrick’s Day

Residents and staff at Strachan House in Edinburgh celebrated all things Irish for St Patrick’s Day last week.

The home was decorated with colourful green white and orange designs and Irish music rang out from all the corridors.

Mandy, Head of Activities, said: “We love a party at Strachan House and St Patricks Day is always a popular celebration to open our doors and welcome everyone in from the community to join in with our residents and staff”.

Held on March 17th, Saint Patrick’s Day actually observes the death of St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, but the day has come to be a huge celebration of Irish heritage and culture.

Staff and residents at the home marked the day by learning about the history as well as many green themed antics. From making shamrock decorations, learning some Irish words and phrases, themed menu and landing a good old knees up party.

Mr and Mrs Barrie who reside at Strachan House, have been together for 70 years and demonstrated you’re never too old to have a good time. Mrs Barrie said “it was lovely to spend an evening with my husband, although I think he preferred the Guinness he was holding in his hand rather than me in the other” 

General Manager, Gordon Philp said: “Our residents have all had a brilliant day today, everyone has enjoyed the festivities – I think we all agree St Patrick’s Day is the best of all the saints’ days!  We had a fantastic time at our Irish party and sampling a few Guinnesses!”

Our varied life enrichment programme keeps residents active, and provides a daily choice of engaging physical, mental and spiritual activities tailored to residents’ interests and abilities.

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.