On Sunday 6 October, focus turns to the wider family for Grandparents Day. Originally an initiative made popular in America, the event has made it across the Atlantic to reach our UK shores. The day is a great opportunity for families everywhere to celebrate the connections that can be formed across different generations. Not to mention thanking grandparents for their support and love over many years.
Sadly, when one or more grandparents need to move into residential care for reasons of age or ill health, it can be harder for children and young people to maintain their relationship with them to the full. Travel times can be longer, and school routines eat up much of the day during the week. Care home managers and staff can help keep the connections strong by supporting contact and links in a number of different ways. This Grandparents Day, why not see how you can help your residents enjoy their family connections to the max and give them the chance to pass down their memories, insights and wisdom to members of the younger generations?
Memories are made of this
As we get older, we build up more and more of a library of stories to share and anecdotes to reminisce over. Some will pass into family lore, while others could be at risk of slipping into obscurity if they are not recorded or written down. Arts and crafts is a great way to help grandparents capture their memories and leave them in an entertaining format for their grandchildren to enjoy. Passing memories down could be a great theme for one or even a whole series of crafting sessions in your care home. Create art walls by pinning up photos, paintings or drawings of relatives, pets, cars, holidays etc and adding labels with names, locations and short stories about what happened when they were taken and why the subject matter is so important to participants’ family history.
Branching out into family trees
Researching a family tree is one of those hobbies that can take as little or as much time as you wish. Residents might simply want to write down or talk about the relatives they remember and help grandchildren construct a family tree with just those details. Or, there are several online resources available now to help interested family members track down older ancestors and learn about their heritage. You could make a good start by using the personal records feature on Care Vision to write down family connections. Then, these details could be transferred to a drawing of a tree by writing each person’s name along one of the branches. Researching family members like this can lead to all kinds of related activities, such as looking into the origins of family surnames or investigating links to any famous or interesting ancestors.
Storytime
Who doesn’t love listening to a story, especially about their own family’s escapades? When children come in to visit older relatives in your care home, make sure there is somewhere quiet and relaxing for everyone to sit together and share stories. Provide tea and cakes and let them bond. Or, if they are unwilling or unable to share tales about their own past, encourage residents to read a book with their grandchildren, or listen to a story tape together. They could even write a story together – provide pens, paper or IT to help with this. You could even make up a book of everyone’s different stories and display it in reception or use it as a fundraising project to sell to friends and visitors.
Inter-generational fun and games
Age doesn’t have to be a barrier to learning new things. Many children play computer games and enjoy watching videos on smartphones and tablets. Help your residents get to grips with technology by holding informal training sessions for them or inviting younger family members to come in and show them what to do. You could provide traditional board games at the same time, such as draughts, chess, playing cards or dominos so that older residents can teach the younger generations games from their own childhood. Or, for more active families, help them set up scavenger hunts or garden games like skittles or croquet.