Excelcare had just started talking to Tony from the Young People of the Year charity, (YOPEY) but the pandemic has put things on halt. YOPEY is 'Creating Tomorrow's Great Citizens Today'. YOPEY runs Befriender schemes where young people befriend care homes residents, many living with dementia. Visiting the homes, they socialize and take part in activities where they share common interests and exchange life experiences. This is a huge benefit to mental wellbeing.
YOPEY Befrienders take part in publicity to give the younger generation a fairer image in the media. By doing this YOPEY improves relations between the generations, including reducing the elderly's fear of teenagers. It also reduces the stigma associated with dementia.
Due to the COVID–19 pandemic, YOPEY can’t visit homes at the moment, so Tony kindly sent letters from them via email to Primrose Croft Care Home. This is open to all of Excelcare homes and those that live at Primrose Croft were very eager to read and reply.
One letter from Laura contained pictures of her pets Reggie and Dougie as well as her and her fiancé and described how she couldn’t currently get married due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone was keen to send a reply and let Laura know what they had been up to lately, as well as describing hobbies and interests. They were also keen to ask Laura if she wanted to take up a joint hobby with them in poetry writing.
The letter being sent back to one of the young people is as follows.
Hello Laura,
Our names are Gwen, Pat, Maureen, Josephine & June. We reside at Primrose Croft Care Home in Cambridge. We hope you do not mind but we thought it would be nice if we all reply together in one letter. Pearl who helps us at Primrose Croft said she would take notes while we were chatting about your letter and she would write it up to email to you.
We love the pictures of Reggie and Dougie and wondered how you came to those names? We are so very sorry to hear about you having to cancel your wedding because of this nasty virus that is going around. We hope it is just postponed and you will be able to go ahead with the wedding once all of this is over.
Pat used to work for a solicitor working hard with all of the paperwork. She said she really enjoyed her job.
Our hobbies and interests are, Gwen – arts and crafts, Pat – singing, dancing and watching snooker, Josephine – Loves a good chat, June – Jigsaws, Maureen – Flower arranging. We had a chat about you taking up a hobby and we were thinking of hobbies that include us. So we wondered if you would like to write us a short story about something or a poem.
We are very lucky as one of our carers is a fantastic singer and he did a live stream from Primrose Croft to a lot of other Care Homes. We had a lovely time.
We have also been working on the rainbow trail and have put some pictures etc. up on our windows.
We have a Facebook page Primrose Croft Care Home – Excelcare where you can see all the wonderful things that we get up to. Do you have Facebook so you can follow our page?
We like the photo of you with your fiancé Reece and think you look lovely together. Do you remember the occasion that the photograph was taken? It looks like you are out in a pub, lucky you!
Thank you for your lovely letter and we look forward to hearing from you again.
Take Care and Keep Safe.
P.S. We hope you like the pictures of us reading your letter.
Residents are looking forward to replying back to some more letters and then eagerly awaiting their reply, hoping to build lasting friendships and relationships for the future. Thanks, YOPEY!