Once again, Admissions & Referrals Co-ordinator Ebony has come up with a novel idea to engage our service users, who have acquired brain injuries, in a range of activities. With the usual activities restricted due to the Coronavirus safety measures, we have been finding new ways to keep service users active and engaged, supporting their mental well-being, physical health and cognitive skills. This time we present The Richardson Games!
We are fortunate to have a large hall at The Richardson Mews, which we use for a wide range of activities. On this occasion, we set up a range of activity stations where service users worked on a one-to-one basis with a staff member. Each pair then worked their way around the hall.
Having various games and activities happening at once boosts a variety of skills such as adapting to change (stopping the activity they are doing and moving on to something else) orientation (to the new task at hand) and, of course, provided some healthy competition, exercise and fun!
Each pair had to read the instructions of the game/activity upon arrival to the activity station. The activity stations were:
- Balloon Tennis
Balloon tennis is the same as table tennis, but we use a balloon instead of a ball. This allows us to slow down the game, ensuring all our service users have an equal opportunity to play and join in the fun. It’s a favourite amongst our service users and it’s sometimes difficult to encourage them to come away from the game to have a rest or do something else. So it was great to have this as part of The Games, making it easier to encourage service users to move on to another task.
- Pairs
A simple game of pairs, using colours: turning two cards over with the aim of making a colour pair. Everyone enjoyed this game, which works on short term memory skills by encouraging our service users to remember the placement of the cards in order to match and make pairs.
- Cups
With little instruction, our service users were given plastic cups and were asked to make a tower using all of the cups. This encouraged cognitive skills such as planning (the structure of the tower) along with other skills like coordination and balance. It was just as fun knocking down the towers at the end as it was to build them!
- Bowling
Who doesn’t love bowling? Our service users really enjoy this activity as it is inclusive of all presentations with minimal support. We were all very surprised when our service user John, got several strikes in a row with complete ease. He had kept his bowling talents a secret from us!
- Rest
This was the least popular station, but it was important to include the opportunity to have a rest alongside lots of games and exercise.
The Richardson Games were a great success, bringing everyone together in a fun activity, boosting morale and supporting skills development.
