Summer Across Our Aged Care Centres
Located in Merewether, New South Wales, Carpenter Court Aged Care Centre’s (“Carpenter Court”) Lifestyle Coordinator, Lucinda, notes that summer is full of fun and sunshine for their residents. “Summer at Carpenter Court is spent going for walks along the beachfront across the road, bus trips for morning and afternoon tea to see our surrounding suburbs, and the ice cream trolley visits every second week in the afternoon. We also have games and gardening in the courtyard to enjoy the sunshine.” Being so close to Merewether Beach and the Merewether Ocean Baths, there is also a ‘swimming group’ at the Centre. “Our swimming group walks to Merewether Baths every Wednesday afternoon for a swim, takes bus trips further out of town for lunches and creates craft items to sell during the months at the fundraising BBQs held on some weekends.”
Of course, resident safety and wellness are of paramount importance during the hotter, Summer months and Lucinda and the Carpenter Court team are prepared accordingly. “We’ve purchased an esky with the funds raised from our BBQ’s and we keep 350ml bottles of water on hand when spending time outdoors. Sunscreen and hats are strongly recommended to everyone spending time in the outdoors and if it’s too hot, we move the activities into a cooler space. All activities are subject to change if the residents are uncomfortable in the heat and adjusted accordingly.”
Likewise, residents at Elizabeth Jenkins Place Aged Care Centre (“Elizabeth Jenkins Place”) in Collaroy, New South Wales, also embrace all that Summer has to offer upon the Northern Beaches. With Collaroy Beach just up the road, many of the residents have fond memories of the beach and enjoy reminiscing about previous Summer days. To get into the ‘spirit of Summer,’ Maria, the Centre’s Lifestyle Coordinator, told of the Centre’s recent Lifestyle activity, which included an ‘armchair travel’ to Hawaii in which residents are transported to Hawaii – all whilst ‘staying put’ in the Centre. This armchair travel day also involved some sweet treats and YouTube videos to create the illusion of being cast away to a tropical island. “We were serving ice cream and it was nice. Many of our residents had been to Hawaii and spoke about this,” Maria says.
With the Australian sun being renowned for being particularly harsh, Maria notes that sun safety is also of paramount importance. With this in mind, there is plenty of sunscreen on site for residents to lather up with and it seems even Santa thought of residents' sun safety. “For Christmas presents, we bought lots of residents' hats.”
Elizabeth Jenkins Place also has plenty of outdoor spaces where residents can soak up the sun and Maria notes how many residents like to sit outside and they have morning tea or coffee. Whilst they haven’t yet had a chance to visit the beach this year, Maria is hopeful that residents will soon be out and about for day trips to Collaroy Beach, enjoying all that their Centre’s beautiful beach suburb has to offer – whilst keeping sun-safe at the same time.
