Young people from Hartlepool boost the morale at a care home with NCS
A young group from Hartlepool United came together to boost the morale of care home residents during the summer. The group chose to renovate the care home garden with an aim to create a positive impact upon the elderly residents, who welcomed the changes after suffering from intense Covid-19 restrictions.
The social action project decided by the young people whilst on NCS, was to help improve and renovate the garden of the Queen’s Meadow care home in Hartlepool. One of the members of the team, Elise Humble, reflected on the project:
“As a team we thought this would massively benefit the care home because of Covid-19 and the restrictions that were in place at the time, which encouraged people to go outside. This social action project would enable the residents to have a better place to go outside, and to even have time and a place to see family members.”
The group initially decided to ask the residents of the care home, to write down how the garden could be improved and placed them in “Care Boxes”. The group worked together to implement the changes, and created boxes containing items such as crosswords, soaps, pens and personalised notes for the care home.
The group then spent two days tidying up the garden, planting new flowers, and utilised their creativity skills, painting the plant boxes and personalising the rocks, bringing smiles to the elderly people during difficult circumstances. The group also decided to buy all items, such as the decorations from charity shops, so awareness could also be raised there.
“The care packages delivered will put a smile on the residents faces. We included a personalised note in each care package, so they knew who it was from and why they were receiving it.”
Elise stated that her time within NCS on the Social Action Project not only benefited the residents within the care home, but also herself and her group members:
“I wasn’t a very confident person and I thought participating would help make develop my communication skills and it would help me meet new people. The experience I gained from NCS has helped me become more confident, and better at communicating with others. We completed tasks where we were talking to members of the public, which would usually be out of my comfort zone, but doing so has helped improve my social skills.”
Elise has mentioned how her newfound confidence has also helped her with talking to larger groups:
“Due to my new confidence, I have now joined the college debate club, which is something completely out of my comfort zone, but thanks to NCS I felt more able to push myself that extra mile.”
“NCS has helped me gain lots of new friends and people to talk to, and it was nice doing something to improve our community with a group of great friends. The NCS experience on a whole was amazing, I would definitely recommend it to others and encourage them to do it too as it was so much fun, it helped me in improving so many skills.”
