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Jodie is June’s Employee of the Month

Care assistant Jodie Macdonald has won our title of June’s Employee of the Month. As well as working as a care assistant Jodie is a qualified massage therapist and uses her skills to give our residents relaxing hand, foot and shoulder massages each week. Jodie’s unwavering dedication, genuine empathy, and selfless commitment have endeared her to both the residents and staff, making her a shining example of the invaluable work done by our care team.

Cheryl Kennedy, our Home Manager gave Jodie her certificate saying “Jodie always goes the extra mile to ensure the comfort and happiness of the residents under her care. Residents and their families have expressed their gratitude for Jodie’s positivity and exceptional care. She’s unfailingly kind and helpful and her therapeutic massage has such a positive impact on the residents.

Staff, residents, and families can nominate their choice to win the award each month. The new scheme is designed to acknowledge and reward exceptional employees who consistently go above and beyond in their roles, inspiring their colleagues and contributing to the overall success of The Charlotte Straker Project.

Barney the pup visits our residents

Great excitement last week when Barney the labradoodle visited Charlotte Straker House. This lovable pup is only 18 months old, belongs to owner Kate Gordon and has been specially trained to bring joy, comfort, and companionship to our residents.

Barney is a very happy, relaxed dog and he adored meeting all of us. He loves cuddles and Kate gave out some treats so that we could reward Barney for being so friendly and polite.

It’s well-known that interactions with animals can reduce stress and anxiety and the shared experience of interacting with Barney led to a great chat about residents’ previous animals and pets.

Thank you so much to Kate and the WAG organisation for allowing Barney to visit – we can’t wait to see him again soon.

Pimms and Sunshine at Charlotte Straker House

Our lovely residents joined in a sunny Pimms afternoon last week. Everyone sat on the decking under the large parasols and enjoyed a glass or two of the traditional summer drink. Fresh fruit was handed round, including melon, strawberries, and raspberries whilst the Pimms was garnished with mint, apple and orange. The residents enjoyed a quiz all about the origins of the drink and Birgit said that the drink was “very tasty”, and Colin told us he’s “always loved Pimms”. John was another fan and said it was “very refreshing”.

There was a good discussion about upcoming sports fixtures during the summer. John and Peter are looking forward to the Ashes on TV and Colin says he enjoys watching Wimbledon and loves the highlights of the Tour de France. (Now we have Sky TV in the downstairs lounge we’ll be holding “Sky Sports Afternoons” over the coming weeks to ensure everyone can watch their favourite sports.)

Our volunteer Jean then read a few chapters of “ Up the Valley” by author Lorna Laidler – and everyone sat in the cool shade, listened to Jean read, glass in hand and enjoyed the sunshine!

Making bubbles: handcrafted soap making with Jodie

We had such a great time making soap last time we had another try on Friday!

Jodie led the session and carefully melted soap and helped residents choose fragrances to mix into the liquid. Claire chose a vibrant blue cornflower petal mix for her soap and John decided on a honeycomb bee mould for his soap mixture. Valerie decided on a lavender and frankincense fragrance and Margaret chose orange and lemon with an oatmeal base.

Jodie showed us how to dust the soap with different coloured cosmetic mica and volunteer Sue carefully coloured Margaret’s honeycomb and bee with yellow and blue mica dust.

John told us he was making his soap as a gift to his family and said he’d give it to “whoever was the dirtiest!”😊 His soap was a blue and red heart with lemon balm and rose.

Margaret told us that she chose the blue colour as “it matches my jumper and blue nail varnish!“.

Thank you to Jodie for leading the session and our staff and volunteers for helping out – the whole of Charlotte Straker House smelt wonderfully of lemon and lavender for the rest of the afternoon.

Embracing the Sunshine: Summer Fete at Charlotte Straker House

We want to share the fantastic time we had at our Summer Fete on Saturday. It was a gorgeous sunny day, perfect for our residents, staff, and the community to come together and have a great time.
Thank you so much to bestselling author LJ Ross who kindly supported us on the day, officially opening the fete plus meeting our residents and visitors and signing books. Louise also donated some signed books to our raffle plus many of her titles to the resident library!
The two raffles and tombola were packed and the teas, cake stall and ice-creams made a roaring trade. Thank you also to the other charities who joined in with their own stalls and to the Sunshine Panners who, as always, provided a great musical backdrop to a very successful day.
Every penny that we made at our Fete will go towards providing complementary therapies and therapeutic massage to our residents.
We are immensely grateful to our dedicated staff, amazing volunteers, and the incredible support of our community, who made this day possible.
Thank you to everyone who attended and helped make our Summer Fete a resounding success!

Shining Stars: Volunteer Week 2023 at Charlotte Straker House

2023 marks the 39th year of Volunteers’ Week (1-7 June), when The Charlotte Straker Project will join thousands of charities recognising the contribution volunteers make across the UK. Charlotte Straker House relies on the commitment of a team of volunteers who help in many ways; from serving as trustees; helping with trips outside the home; organising our shop trolley; helping at fundraising events; joining in activity sessions or befriending individual residents. Each volunteer is massively important to our charity.

As part of the 2023 Volunteer’s Week, we have shared below the work of a few of our key volunteers – If you would like to volunteer to help our residents at Charlotte Straker House, please call 01434 633 999 or visit https://charlottestraker.org.uk/volunteers/

Garden Games

Margaret S, one of our residents, challenged Megan, a student nurse, to a game of Connect 4 in the sunshine. We have bought some oversized tabletop games to encourage everyone to have a go – as well as being great fun they help improve hand/eye coordination and concentration. Margaret and Megan had a great game with some friendly competition, especially as Margaret remembered playing the game when she was younger. Everyone loves making the most of the good weather and sitting in our beautiful gardens in the sunshine.

Sangria in the Sunshine

This week’s weather was lovely and warm, so our residents sat on the outside decking, under the shade of our awning, and enjoyed a glass of sangria and a selection of tapas – they said it was just like being on holiday in Spain!

Regular musicians Roley and Richard visited as part of the afternoon and everyone sang along to the well-known songs, whilst enjoying some authentic tapas including stuffed peppers, olives, sundried tomatoes, Parma ham, salami and anchovies.

Colin really enjoyed the afternoon and said, “please can we do this again next week?!”.

Peter L loved trying all the different olives, whilst Margaret G, Margaret S and Muriel agreed that it was lovely to taste all the different food.

Our cook Debbie made a jug of sangria, which resident Clare particularly enjoyed. Some residents told us they had never tasted it before but found it very refreshing.

Thank you to Roley and Richard for their singing and everyone who helped us with the afternoon – it was very popular, so we’ll definitely be doing it again!

Wine and Cheese Tasting

Our residents indulged in the finer things in life recently with a cheese and wine tasting afternoon organised by our Activities Coordinator. Everyone had the opportunity to savour a variety of delicious cheeses paired with red and white wines and spent time exploring the flavours, aromas, and textures. We enjoyed tasting a delectable selection of artisan cheeses including creamy brie, tangy Roquefort, nutty Gouda and sharp Cheddar, and a blind variety of carefully chosen wines. John B enjoyed the tasting session so much he said “I’d like to do another one, as soon as possible! I really loved choosing my favourites.” Colin said, “the Italian wine really complemented all the Italian cheeses – they went perfectly together.” The most popular wines were a red and white from Spain and France and the sharp Cheddar and Stilton were the favourite cheeses.

Our Coronation Baking Triumph!

Our residents entered the spirit of the coronation this month by baking fairy cakes for the recent St Andrew’s Church coronation cake competition. Helped by our cook Helen, they spent the afternoon mixing, baking, and decorating. John told us “this is the first time I’ve ever made a cake!”. Margaret and Muriel shared their best tips and tricks for creating a light sponge cupcake. After the judging, we found out that our resident’s cakes were Highly Commended and our cook Debbie had won first in the Professional Category for her Coronation Fruit Cake! Well done to our bakers and well done Debbie – the prizes were very much deserved. All the cakes were sold to raise money for our charity and the Corbridge Youth Initiative – thank you to all the organisers, judge Carol Malia and everyone who bought a cake.