This week we have been marking Co-Production Week 2022 and highlighting the benefits our charity and our beneficiaries have gained from working in partnership which is enabling our residents to use their skills and experience to help each other, and helping us improve their services.
Meet Brenda, aged 90 – one of our care home residents who despite being profoundly deaf, has been using her expertise to run a seated exercise class to music for her fellow residents.
Brenda started to lose her hearing at the age of 40 and although she doesn’t use sign language, she became, and still is, an excellent lip reader. It was difficult for her when face masks were compulsory for everyone during the height of the pandemic. “I did have to ask staff in the home and my family and friends to remove their masks so I could see what they were saying, but we just kept our distance,” she says.
So, how does she manage to match her exercise routines with the music when she can’t hear it? “Exercise is dry without music and it’s important to have it, but I only use music I am familiar with and although it’s difficult to explain, I can feel it when it plays.” It’s difficult to believe Brenda’s age when you meet her, but she’s always been very active having started out in showbusiness, as a member of the London Palladium’s dance troupe, supporting various West End shows.
Brenda decided to give it up when she got married and started a family, but she later decided to set up her own ballet school locally in Pyford and taught there for twenty years. Afterwards, rather than retire Brenda decided to retrain as an exercise teacher and began teaching adult exercise classes, which she did for a further twenty years.
“I’ve always loved dance and exercise is very social and brings people together. We have a physiotherapist who can do exercise classes for us here at Ingram House, but I felt I could help, and I wanted to, as I thought it might encourage more people to come along if they knew a friend was doing their class. It’s lovely to see people having fun and feeling the benefits of their exercise and it’s good for me too, as I feel I’m using my skills to help others and make a difference,” she says.
Amazingly, everyone pictured here in Brenda’s class is over 90 years old – with two residents almost 100, and another – our oldest resident Mary, (seen here at the far end), an amazing 107! No doubt these ladies are some of the oldest keep fit fans in the country – putting many of us, and our sedentary ways to shame!
You can watch a clip of Brenda with her class below:
Meet Brenda
Co-Production Week 2022
