Oak Springs Care Home Unites Generations with Innovative Pilot

Liverpool’s Oak Springs Care Home is bringing generations together through TikTok, toys and tons of school memories.

In the first scheme of its kind, the care home in Wavertree, Liverpool, has launched ‘Project Generations Together’ to encourage interaction, build bonds and share memories between 20 of its care home residents and four visiting local children.

The four children, aged between five and 12 years old, are visiting the home every Friday during the summer holidays as part of an innovative project to unite the generations.

Andrea Lyon, Registered Manager of Oak Springs Care Home, who came up with the idea, said:
“Like all care homes, over the past two years we’ve not been able to have many visitors.

“So to celebrate being able to get back out into the community we thought it would be lovely to launch Project Generations Together to explore and celebrate the bonds between local children today and our residents.

“When I was a child I loved staying with my grandparents and listening to all their memories and stories about life in ‘the olden days’. We want to recreate those lovely bonds with our own residents and a small group of local children.

“We’ve got lots of fantastic activities planned and we’re expecting the children and our residents to really inspire – and learn from – each other. Everyone will be keeping a diary of what they’ve learnt over the six weeks and we’ll invite the children back in regularly and ask them if they would like to become pen pals.

“Last Friday’s Toy Week theme was a great success. The children were intrigued by all the old toys and to find out more, through the toys, about the lives of our residents when they were young.

“The children couldn’t believe that some residents didn’t have any toys at all growing up and only received an orange and a shiny new 6-pence with the date on it for Christmas. There was some lovely interaction and everyone is excited about this week’s event.

“It’s an exciting pilot scheme and we’ll definitely look at rolling it out across the other care homes in the Sandstone Care Group.”