Hazel is a resident at Hunters Down Care Home and was recently delighted to see her face in the national paper this week.
This all started when Hazel's daughter published a Facebook post about how her mother had been helping out animals effected in the Australian bush fires. Hazel is a talented knitter and sent some handmade jumpers to Australia back in January, to support the animals affected by the fires.
When people saw her daughter's post and what Hazel had done, they began to respond with likes and positive comments. To date, the post has now amassed almost 2,000 comments and over 18,000 likes!
The local paper spotted this and after speaking to the home, published a piece in the local paper about Hazel's selfless actions.
More recently, Hazel appeared in a National paper, this time about her experiences with chair-based Excercise Scheme, Love to Move.
Love to Move is a chair-based exercise programme, advocated by the British Gymnastics Foundation, with a scientifically proven advantage for people with dementia. Homes across the group regularly take part and the results have been outstanding.
Hazel's daughter Gill, was interviewed in the article, where she talked about how the session helped her mother. She recalled the time when her mother had a fall and had to be moved to Hunters Down, sharing the struggles Hazel had due to the incident and how this improved with the help of the programme.
"Soon we could see her try to lift things and slowly she started to talk again. Now she chats away, reads better, and can pick up a hot cup of tea safely. She has even been able to knit blankets for an animal rescue centre in Australia,” said Gill.
Hazel is now a bit of a local celebrity with all this newspaper presence and with the help of Love to Move, is living life to her full potential.