Video celebrates hospice project with local nursery

Accord Hospice in Paisley, Scotland, have produced a video to celebrate their intergenerational work with a local nursery. Charge Nurse Alison Auld tells us more. When a project that saw children from Jennyswell Nursery in Paisley visiting day therapy patients at Accord Hospice had to be paused due to the lockdown, the nursery asked the hospice to film a video for their children.

The video was filmed in the hospice gardens, featuring staff dancing with their mascot Charlie the big bear. “Due to the significance of the rainbow at the moment I had a look around the hospice at all the colours outside in our gardens” Alison explains. “Our new toadstools, a snakes and ladders table, a lion, our uniforms also playing into the colour theme and of course not forgetting big Charlie the bear.”

“A staff members’ daughter very kindly put the video together for us, ending with the staff clapping for our NHS colleagues, all care and essential workers. Everyone really loved making this video. The nursery are delighted and I believe are preparing something to send back to us.”

The intergenerational project began after the hospice’s day therapy staff watched a documentary about the impact on wellbeing of similar work in a documentary. Initially they invited children from the nursery along to the hospice’s Christmas Party. The patients and children enjoyed the event so much, the nursery staff asked if they could be more involved with Accord in the future.

The project saw children visiting the hospice every second Tuesday and Thursday of the month, with the day therapy unit planning the programme one week and the nursery the next. If enough patients from the in-patient unit felt well enough to attend they were also invited along.

The sessions involved activities like the parachute game, which benefitted patients by taking their minds off their symptoms while giving them the chance to exercise. The children also taught the patients songs for them all to sing together. 

Alison explains that there was one patient who stuck in her mind. “A gentleman who had attended day therapy for a while and had been a quiet man was so taken with the children that he taught them a song from his childhood. That was the highlight of one of the days.”

Unfortunately due to Covid-19 the project has been put on hold. “The nursery are very keen, as are we at the hospice, to keep the momentum of this going” Alison says.  “That’s why the staff asked us to make a video they could share with the children. They hope to restart this when everything gets back to normal.”

For more information visit Accord Hospice

Watch the video here