Liverpool Care Home Residents Knit City’s ‘Longest Scarf’
Staff, residents, friends and family of a Liverpool care home have teamed together to knit what they believe is the city’s longest woollen scarf – long enough to reach twice as high as the iconic Royal Liver Building.
Oak Springs Care Home has spent January knitting and stitching together a giant wool patchwork scarf which stretches all the way along the home’s corridor and back.
They have also received knitted donations from staff at Liverpool’s John Lewis, charity The Reader’s Knit & Natter Group and a local Girl Guides and Brownie group.
The scarf has been knitted to celebrate Dignity Action Day #DAD2023 which is an annual opportunity for health and social care workers and members of the public to uphold people’s rights to dignity and provide a truly memorable day for people who use care services.
Oak Springs Care Home’s giant scarf is over 340ft long and the equivalent size of:
• Nearly twice as high as the Royal Liver Building
• As long as ten double decker buses
• Almost as long as a Premiership football pitch
• Would reach three quarters of the way up the Radio City Tower
• The height of 18 Superlambananas
Andrea Lyon, Registered Manager of Oak Springs Care Home in Church Road, Wavertree, said:
“We wanted to do a dignity day with a slightly different approach this year. The idea was to capture people as individuals by asking them to knit squares in various patterns, giving them the freedom of choice to create their own designs, use their own colours and choose different textures of wool to represent them.
“We offered staff, residents, families, and external professionals the opportunity to add their own choices to our scarf knitting too and we have been busy this week attaching all the sections together – wrapping them around us all to bring us together as one community.
“The scarf is symbolic, allowing us to recognise that all our residents are individuals and have their own preferences and choices, but everyone is cared for in the same caring way.
“We have been absolutely blown away by the support we have had from staff, residents, family and friends and the local community to our project.
“Everyone has worked so hard over the past three weeks to knit their own individual squares for the scarf and, when we measured it, we couldn’t believe it was 340ft long and still growing. I think we’re going to have to relabel the day Dig-KNIT-y Day.
“To celebrate yesterday’s Dignity Action Day workshop we invited everyone who has helped in the project in to see the finished scarf. It will then be divided up and made into blankets and donated to Liverpool Women’s Hospital and a local homeless charity.”
Dame Joan Bakewell, Dignity in Care Ambassador, said:
“Dignity Action Day highlights a more respectful way of behaving towards vulnerable people. The very old and the very young clearly need our respect, but it wouldn’t do any harm to spread the dignity message across the population then we can all benefit.”
