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Children Help Combat Loneliness And Bring Joy To Care Workers And Residents

Specialist dementia care home provider, Vida Healthcare has teamed up with Saltergate Schools to bring joy and happiness to frontline workers and residents in support of Loneliness Awareness Week 2021.

Saltergate Schools pupils with their handwritten letters

This year’s Loneliness Awareness Week, which takes place on 14-18 June, aims to encourage people to talk about loneliness in an attempt to remove the stigma and shame around it.

To support the theme, the children have handwritten letters for each resident and care worker across Vida Healthcare’s two homes; Vida Grange and Vida Hall. They’ve also handcrafted beautiful butterflies to brighten up the home and raise people’s spirits.

Linda Mortimer, Executive Headteacher at Saltergate Schools, who led the initiative, commented:
“Everybody is likely to experience loneliness at some point in their life. Many people have recently felt very isolated after a year of lockdowns and social restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Loneliness Awareness Week was the perfect opportunity for us to give back to our local community and educate our children about loneliness. Accepting that we all feel lonely sometimes is an important lesson and learning what we can do to help others and ourselves manage feelings of loneliness is critical.

Over one million older people report feeling lonely all the time, and even when living in a care home, loneliness and isolation can still occur.

According to Christina R Victor’s ‘Loneliness in care homes: a neglected area of research?’ thesis, rates of severe loneliness reported by people living in care homes (22-42%) are more than twice that of residents in the wider community (10%).

James Rycroft, Managing Director at Vida Healthcare, added:
“The main role of a care home is to provide high quality care to its residents and create a positive living environment which promotes good wellbeing and reduces feelings of isolation and loneliness. This is something we’re proud to achieve at Vida Healthcare.

“We are so pleased to have had the support this year from Saltergate Schools to make our staff and residents feel extra special. The butterflies look fantastic and our residents and staff have all been really touched by the handwritten letters.”

Vida Healthcare is coordinating numerous Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities with local schools throughout the year, having previously teamed up with Rossett Acre to raise money for the Alzheimer's Society and later on in the year there will be a Christmas Carol event, which hopes to be held in person this year as Covid-19 restrictions continue to lift.

If you’d like to partner with Vida Healthcare on a Corporate social responsibility project, please get in touch via its website: www.vidahealthcare.co.uk