AIBU to think care homes need more age-appropriate entertainment?

😂 I did not. But I had the most amazing neon jelly bracelets that I was waaaay to emotionally invested in.

let’s hope if I go into a care home I don’t have to eat Findus crispy pancakes every night while wearing a bright pink shell suit (yes, I had one of those too).

The thing is, music is such an amazing stimuli to memory. Decades after my first time falling in love, my stomach would still lurch when the opening chords of "our song" came on the radio.
There was a woman at my Mum's care home who was physically quite good but far down the dementia road- barely verbal and always sad or angry looking. At one of their music afternoons, she blossomed... she got up and pulled one of the carers up to dance with her, with a beaming smile on her face. She was so happy for those 3 minutes

Can we get some Wagner in there too?

Did you wear grolsch bottle tops on your shoes though ?

😂 not only did I like them I though I might marry one! I was a very sad pre-teen.

Let's hope this is closer to the reality when we are all old.
20 years ago when I worked in care, the norm was still shared bathrooms and even shared bedrooms, with just partition curtains down the middle. At least for funded places. Self funding rooms tended to be bigger and have bathrooms
Now it seems to be standard for all rooms to be en-suite with no sharers.
So maybe in another 20 years we'll start seeing kitchenettes and dining areas!! 🤞

I'm not sure anyone plans to move into a care home when they're young and well! 😏 Unfortunately my MIL had no other option, she kept wandering and getting lost.

Her care home is very good though. They gave us a questionnaire when she moved in asking about her interests and what kind of things she enjoys. It's only a small home though and not all of them have dementia so often the residents will say themselves what they want to do.

They have takeaway nights where they'll order in chips or Chinese and people can have what they want and they try to arrange days out that cater to people's interests.

Last time we went they were listening to Bryan Adams and they've watched the ABBA musical and things like that.

My nan's care home had a pub on site. The pumps were just for show and the beer was bottled but it did actually look like a real pub.

Yes, me too. But you pay the earth for even a basic place. I'm not sure what you're suggesting exists, and if it did it would be prohibitively expensive. If I do end up in a home I reckon I'm going to stay in my room all the time to avoid the constant generic TV and radio.

Listen, we all have buried chapters and dark parts of our past we'd like to keep buried. I thought take that were sexy in their weird thong era 🤣

You liked Bros? Oh, ffs...😆

I couldn't agree more.
I started my working life in care homes. That was my late teens over 20 years ago.
We belted out the war songs and the residents tended to respond very well. Back in the early 2000s, the war had only ended 60 years prior, and people in their 80s and 90s remembered it well, even those in their 70s had it as part of their formative years. Plus these songs were designed to drum up community spirit and camaraderie.
Fast forward 20 years and I went to visit a friend in a care home. I was shocked to see nothing af moved with the times. I could see the residents were different, different clothes, different hair, clearly from a whole new generation, but the same music, the same hairdressers offering the same perms and blue rinses.
Yes, they probably all know the war songs, don't we all but FFS. This is their parents' music.
I'd definitely say something, they should have an activities co-ordinator you can speak to.

What is depressing is the lack of awareness. The assumption that anyone over 65 is frozen in an age of black and white tv, wartime music and war time, rationed meals. That they won’t have ever had a Chinese takeaway, pizza, curry or really experienced anything that was commonly available post 1980.

I have never met someone in their seventies and eighties like that - who has shut themselves off from popular culture for decades whose taste have not in any way been influ need by the massive shifts over the last fifty years.

I am nearly fifty. I don’t still use a bright yellow Walkman and a landline! I don’t watch the goodies on repeat and Bros is no longer my favourite band.

The problem, as this thread very clearly shows, is that everyone has very different tastes and usually very specific. They really can't win.

Same with food. My mum in her 80s was quite happy with pasta or "Chinese" but not curries.

My plan is to avoid going into a care home. Then I can eat what I want and listen to and watch my choice all the time.

i find this hard to believe. My parents, their friends and my aunts and uncles are in their 70s and 80s. They didn’t go into cold storage after the 1970s!

They were in their fifties in the 1990s in their sixties in 2000s. They eat Chinese takeaways, Indians, pizza, lasagne. Spag boll was a stable weekday family meal in the 90s. My grandmother - who would be 120 if she was still alive was of he generation of more simple meat and two veg taste / and even she lived through the ago of regular Chinese take away, pasta for dinner, rice etc.

and to edit that even very rural people had access to supermarkets with rice, pasta frozen pizza in the 1990s and 2000s.

remember the generation you are talking about had kids who were in school in the 1980s and 1990s. Lasagne was a stable pub grub. Lots of pasta dishes

The menus were harder to work with. We had people from 75 on up and most didn't like pasta or rice so it was difficult to change up much. But their childhood food and all the way to the 1970's it was meat and two veg for most of the country unless you lived near major cities with access to curry and Chinese foods.

Absolutely, and the menus will be a bit more adventurous than meat and two veg all the time!

I worked in a nursing home and complained about the same thing. On days I was in charge we changed it up
I told them to put on music from their youth , not their parents music.
We started using things like Elvis, Abba, Rolling Stones, Beatles. Got a much better reaction. Someone linked their Netflix account on the TV and we watched newer films that they loved too.

Potentially there’s still some oldies approaching 100, who may respond well to this but I imagine there will be a wide age range from 70s+. They’d have been in their hay day in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

This should be reflected in the entertainment and activities they are subjected to receive.

I’d like to think there will be some DnB djs, old skool classics and 90s indie nights if I ever reside in one of these.

I also think this about their decor and food, updates should be made every so often to reflect how tastes changed per generation.

I have seen a lot of videos on tik tok of care home ‘entertainment’ and it’s awful - so patronizing. Poor quality, awful and largely aimed at children.

I dread ever having to go into a care home. It would make me so angry to have to endure this.

my parents are late seventies and recently finished four seasons on Netflix - I can’t imagine them signing roll out the barrel - they weren’t even born during the war!

Well he'd probably blame for not being specific so here's to Johnnie Walker Red Label Whisky.

Love the correct spelling for Scotch Whisky
😘

Oh yes noise cancelling earbuds might be a lifesaver.

Me too and a good dose of silence. I have a relative in a home currently and it is so noisy.

My granddad was in a care home with a snooker table, it seemed popular. The nuns who ran it seemed good fun and could play snooker and happily gave granddad a regular glass of whisky. They would laugh and say it was wonderful how his hearing improved if you said whisky. They were right, I thought it was the equivalent of always having a space for pudding even if you couldn't eat another bite of dinner so his hearing was poor but there was a special ear for whisky. He was very well cared for and had a great relationship with the nuns who also lived in the home.