Activities Workshops
These half-day workshops provide Activity Co-ordinators and other nursing home staff with the knowledge, direction and ideas to create engaging activities programmes in their care centres.
Care staff can sometimes find it difficult to create activities programmes that are inclusive and individualised for residents who are living with dementia, particularly where the dementia is severe. Studies have shown that residents of care centres spend the majority of their time not engaged in any meaningful activity. These workshops are hands-on and interactive, providing participants with direction on how to design activates and create resources that meet individual needs.
When well designed, activities:
- Promote self esteem
- Maintain the person’s skills and abilities
- Compensate for lost abilities
- Provide an opportunity for enjoyment, pleasure and social contact
- Are tailored to the needs of each person
The workshops have Category 1 accreditation with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland. Who are these workshops for? Activity Coordinators and other health and social care professionals and caregivers.
Life Story Boards (half-day workshop)
Life story is critical to understanding a person and designing activities that support their physical and psychological wellbeing. Learn how to create resources and life story boards, which suggest daily activities to enhance a person’s physical and psychological wellbeing
Learning outcomes from this workshop:
- Understanding what makes up an individual
- Learning how to identify and source information, photographs and keepsakes that tap into a person’s retained memories and life story
- Knowing what resources work best, including music for happiness
- Being able to work as a team to combine life story elements efficiently
- Learning how to create life story boards to support enhanced daily life
Tailored activities on a shoestring (half-day workshop)
This workshop is full of knowledge and ideas for creating resources to support a rich and varied activities programme.
It includes:
- Planning themes for engagement and choice
- Developing individualised activities that maintain personhood and life skills
- Capturing seasonal resources from the outdoors
- Transforming every day materials into resources for engagement
- Improving the physical environment to support wellbeing
At the end of the course participants will be able to:
- Identify and secure resources from a wide variety of sources, within a tight budget
- Seasonally identify resources in the outdoor environment, and create a plan to maximise their use
- Be equipped to choose themes for engagement and choice
- Develop individualised resources to support an improved quality of everyday life for those who live in residential care
- Understand pacing in the delivery of activities
Areas covered:
- Using recycled materials
- Bringing the outdoors inside
- Fostering engagement and enjoyment
- Finding ways of using materials
- Health and safety