Dad was a smoker in a wheelchair; he’d have other smoking care staff line up to take him out for a 5 minute break! Other residents would meet up in the garden, or in the staff smoking area, one was a lovely gentleman with a pipe.
Dad only was forced to give up in his last week of life after being a resident for 6 years, and that was because he was in a coma!
The first floor that Dad was on, there was a real, licenced bar, which was used for resident meetings, evening entertainment, discussions (and most of our social service meetings as it was quiet until the evening). Dad never drank, but there were great tales of brilliant singalong evenings with a couple of pints to get groups of residents to mingle from other floors.
Dad was allowed a £25 ‘spends’ budget from his calculated ‘earnings’ that paid for his care, so he did have to reduce the amount he smoked (from 40+ to 4-5 a day).
When he died a few weeks ago, one of the saddest days was saying goodbye to the staff who’d been with him for years (he was the longest resident), everyone knew him from the smoking area, so many staff we’d never met gave us so many tales of his words of wisdom.