The Friends wanted to give residents something extra special to help them celebrate Christmas 2022 and worked with the local Tesco and care home staff to create stockings for every resident in Oaklands Care Home. The Friends made 39 stockings, each of which was left at the foot of a resident’s bed on Christmas morning. The stockings were filled with gifts including toiletries, sweets and biscuits that were mostly donated by the local Tesco.
Chairman of Oaklands Catherine Wood said she is always very conscious of residents that don’t have family members or friends to visit them and who might be very lonely because of this, especially at Christmas time. She came up with the idea of making stockings to support lonely residents especially and to make their Christmas days a bit brighter.
“I know the home does a lot to make their day lovely and as the Friends group, we just wanted to do something as well to make their day a little better,” Catherine said.
After the Friends arranged supplies and organised the stockings, they delivered them to Oaklands a few days before Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning wellbeing co-ordinators at Oaklands got up very early to deliver the stockings as a surprise for residents when they woke up. Catherine said the residents were very excited and completely surprised by the gifts. She said at the end of the day the gesture is just about providing a little bit of unexpected joy to residents.
