To wonder if my children and I can randomly socialise with people at a nursing home?

[GardenBirdsFriend]

Our little family (DH, DS, DS, and I) are the only ones who live in the UK at the moment. The rest of our family are expats in other countries/continents. Our boys are going to be 3 years old soon, and once they are little older, I was wondering if I can just take one or the other to a local nursing home to socialise a bit? I'm not sure if this is a weird idea. They wouldn't get that grandparent contact otherwise, we do visit our families but it's not very often (usually once a year), and we remain in contact over the phone.

Anyways, it's just an idea. I'm not sure if that would be a good or bad one? AIBU to wonder if my children and I can randomly socialise with people at a nursing home?

There's a charity that focuses on people looking to do this once a month and always looking for volunteers. It's Contact the Elderly and we loved it when we did it for 3 years.

www.contact-the-elderly.org.uk

These may be able to help set you up with someone cyrilflint.org/ they are a befriending charity, but not sure if they're active nationwide.

My daughters nursery do this, but tbh I think it’s a bit dated (I remember doing it at school in the 80s) they rock up with a harvest festival package and the old people are all off soon yoga or something.

It rather assumes the elderly people will be delighted by toddlers and this isn’t the case!

DP and I now run care homes for a company and we were discussing this the other day and funnily enough I am writing risk assessments

Firstly for those worrying OP will waltz in you are aware most care homes are locked entry right?
Oddly OP you wpuld be the problem more, an unrelated to the residents stranger would need to be DBS to come in and have regular contact like that.

Otherwise I agree with pp contact a befriending service because pp are right some residents can be further along in dementia and can have outbursts that would upset children