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Residents of a dementia care home in Wellington were delighted when a shopping trip undertaken for ‘just a loaf of bread’ turned into a full-scale weekly shop.
Jean Barnett and Margaret Flemming, who both live at Camelot House and Lodge, were accompanying home manager Zillah Oakes on what was intended to be a short outing but resulted – with their enthusiastic encouragement – in yielding a major trolley-full of groceries.
Zillah Oakes said: “We’d only gone into Lidl to buy some bread, but Jean and Margaret started browsing the shelves and commenting on goods they recognised from when they used to do their own shopping, and then all sorts of nostalgic memories surfaced.
“They had huge fun spotting packaging they recognised, like Oxo, which Margaret told me her family used to enjoy dipping slices of bread into.
“As time ticked by lots of recollections emerged: their families’ favourite foods, memories of regular items they used to buy, special ingredients required for children’s or husbands’ birthday meals.
“This was an impromptu outing with one other colleague, but it developed into a really worthwhile activity for Margaret and Jean and they enjoyed themselves enormously.
“On the spur of the moment, and with the benefit of knowing what items were likely to be required by our chefs, I suggested we did a ‘proper shop’ and the ladies were only too pleased, so we were out for quite a bit longer than originally planned
“It took us a while to unpack it all when we got home too.
“They told me afterwards they’d had a really great afternoon.
“For the people we support at Camelot House and Lodge, who are all living with dementia, it is so important to maintain a sense of purpose and it helps when they can do some of the normal activities they’ve done all their lives, so we work hard to facilitate this whenever we can, both inside and outside the home.”
Camelot House and Lodge is run by award-winning dementia care provider Camelot Care, who also run homes in Bridgwater and Yeovil in Somerset, and in Holsworthy and Plymouth in Devon.
