Caritas Plymouth is working with ten primary schools from Plymouth CAST Multi-Academy Trust and ten care homes to enable residents and pupils to develop inter-generational friendships through engaging activities. Despite being unable to meet face to face, our pupils and Care Home residents have been making new friendships.
We held a meeting with Care Homes in November and received lots of great feedback: ‘The residents received hand-prints from the children which was lovely for the residents, and they are going to do the same thing back for the children. There will be children from year 6 to sing carols for the residents in the garden.….it has probably felt quite insular for many of the residents recently and so it is lovely for them to connect with the outside world.’
‘Letters from the children were read out to the residents. The residents wrote about their own school days and gave the children some advice. …. They have also linked via Zoom in their cinema room. Their next activity will be to invite the school to come and meet Santa at the home in the garden’.
The picture above shows a meeting between pupils of St Mary and St Joseph’s Primary School in Wool and residents from Upton Bay Care Home. Having linked together via Zoom, the residents visited the children in their minibus for Children in Need.
We are really looking forward to seeing how these relationships grow and develop in the coming months and years. You can read about this exciting project in our latest Newsletter : Intergenerational Project December Newsletter
This project is part of an exciting national initiative known as Care Home Friends and Neighbours: Intergenerational Linking. We are grateful for a grant from the intergenerational linking initiative, which is run by partner organisations My Home Life England and The Linking Network, and is jointly funded by The Dunhill Medical Trust and the #iwill Fund, from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.