By Tim Brooke, Head of Hotel Services for Bupa Care Services

Anyone who is involved in caring for older people, or who has a relative in care, will know the difference that activities can make to a person’s wellbeing. The impact can be transformational, with activities proving a catalyst to enhancing the day-to-day quality of their lives.

Activities form a fundamental part of the fabric and character of any care home. They help create a rich sense of identity, an energy that lights up every corner of the home and brings with it a powerful sense of community.
It is about supporting residents to do the things they want to do, to tailor activities to the individual and to the group and to meet all their intellectual, spiritual, social, emotional and even sensory needs.
It is a tall order, but a challenge that brings enormous rewards for those people charged with co-ordinating these activities.

To meet the demands of these activities and high standards, we have launched the first ever national level qualification for activity co-ordinators, in recognition of the key role that these individuals play.
Bupa care homes, in association with NAPA (National Association of Providers of Activities for Older People), has devised a new training programme leading to the equivalent of a National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) Level Two.

The feedback has been extremely positive and the wide-ranging benefits are already being experienced across all Bupa care homes. For the activity co-ordinators, one of the most beneficial parts of the training has been the encouragement it gives them to talk more with a resident’s family and friends to discover as much as possible about their lives before they arrive.

The insights from doing this and the understanding gained of a person’s life experiences, has proved invaluable in putting together individual activity plans for residents, so they can get the very best out of the home.
Another key element of the training is the encouragement provided to activity co-ordinators to embrace a ‘can-do’ culture. In one care home, a resident was an enthusiastic ice-skater and was keen to get back on her skates again. With the ‘everything is possible’ attitude, the team managed to arrange for a group of the residents to go ice-skating for the day.

In another home with a snooker table, residents had trouble using it, so the team came up with the clever solution by mounting it on an electric-bed base, allowing the table to be raised and lowered to meet the residents’ needs.

It is this blend of imagination and determination to succeed that is encouraged, and it is this kind of initiative and commitment to creating the best possible environment for activities that this new training programme promotes.

The reality is that in future, the skills and expertise of activity co-ordinators will be in even greater demand as the next generation grows older and need some form of care.

Take the so-called ‘baby-boomers’. They are used to having control of their lives and exercising choice in the activities they do. It is unlikely they are going to change just because they are older – so a care home is going to need to match these expectations, and much of this responsibility is going to fall upon the activity co-ordinators to achieve this.

This new activity co-ordinator training programme, with its processes for identifying, planning and providing activities, is a great aid and will provide the framework for the co-ordinators to make an even greater difference to residents’ lives.

By the end of the year, virtually all of Bupa’s activity co-ordinators will have completed the course, providing the perfect grounding for new recruits while building on the current activity co-ordinators’ existing knowledge.
NAPA has high hopes that other providers will follow Bupa’s lead.

More information can be found at www.bupacarehomes.co.uk