Spooky goings-on at our care homes in Swanage and beyond

This Halloween there were no tricks, but plenty of treats for the residents of our care homes in Swanage and across England.

And it wasn’t just residents who got into the ’spirit’ of things. Our care teams loved getting into spooky character, devising ghostly goings-on such as Halloween games, parties and cake decorating.

At Agincare we love celebrations and parties, basically any chance to blow up balloons, put up some bunting and have a good laugh. And Halloween is a great excuse for care home teams and residents to bring out the costumes and face paints.

The Lansdowne Hill Care Home team channelled their inner witches, decorating the lounge with pumpkins, bats and broomsticks.

And the residents at Rochester Care Home in Kent played a hotly-contested game of Halloween Bingo.

Of course, joining in with the spooky theme is a resident’s choice. There is always space in our care homes for those who prefer not to do a certain activity to find a quieter spot.

Pumpkins galore!

There are some very talented and artistic carvers in our residential and dementia care homes in Swanage, across Dorset and beyond.

The team at Gainsborough, our Swanage residential care home, organised a Halloween colouring competition and pumpkin-carving. One of their pumpkins was even strictly adhering to PPE guidelines, with his own face mask!

Swanage itself is home to the 18th Century Royal Oak pub, which is reputed to be haunted. Spooky happenings in the old pub are recounted in tales of a curtain moving by itself, pictures falling off the wall and strange footsteps.

A little further west along the Dorset coast, the team at Agincourt Care Home in Weymouth took a slightly different approach to their carving. Instead of pumpkins their residents created fiendish faces out of melons, apples and avocados, which they found easier to scoop out and carve. And of course, the fruit was also delicious to eat!

The Agincourt fruity carvings were accompanied by a colony of bats flying down from the ceiling. Bats also featured at several other care homes, including Victory Care Home in Chatham.

At Naseby Care Home in Christchurch the pumpkins were almost as big as the residents themselves!

We held a pumpkin popularity poll on Facebook. Six pumpkins from care homes vied for the most votes on the Agincare Homes Facebook page. After a flurry of votes and comments, Tilford Care Home in Farnham came out on top, closely followed by Swindon’s Lansdowne Hill Care Home.

A massive thank you to the teams at our care homes for being such good sports. They’ve really supported their residents to get into the swing of things. We’ve never seen so many orange, green and black balloons!

Crafty creations

There were lots of impressive crafty Halloween creations too. At Crecy Care Home in Weymouth there were crocheted mini pumpkins, and Ian at Edgehill Care Home in Swindon made a suitably scary spider.

Residents at Rochester Care Home created ghostly bunting to decorate the lounge. With help from the Rochester team, the residents drew, cut out and decorated suitably spooky shapes.

Tasty Halloween morsels

And of course, there was plenty of cake. Care home kitchens created pumpkin-shaped cakes and cupcakes for their residents to ice and decorate. These took pride of place alongside Halloween lunches and teas. Celebrating the 31st of October is certainly hungry work!

To find out more about any of our care homes please call us on 01305 443 231.