It’s Learning Disability Week 2021 and this year’s theme is art and creativity. Our services love getting creative and we reached out to 60 Cobham Road to find out why arts and crafts are a regular part of their activity plan. We also talked about how being creative has helped the people we support, especially over the last 12 months.

60 Cobham Road is a residential care home. Here, we support up to six people with learning disabilities, autism and challenging behaviour. The home has a varied activity programme, which includes arts and crafts. However, over the last year and periods of lockdown, getting creative has helped the residents at this service more than ever. Arts and crafts have played a key role in supporting peoples mental health and wellbeing and helped people to express themselves.

Residents got involved in many creative challenges like, making their own campfire and baking Halloween cookies. Not everyone enjoyed arts and crafts, but since the beginning of lockdown in 2020, more people found their individual passions and now love taking part.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the home experienced an increase in challenging behaviour and used creativity to help with this. Beresford, a resident at 60 Cobham Road, suffers with anxiety but the team have discovered that arts and crafts can help reduce his anxiety. Beresford enjoys drawing and painting. As soon as the arts and crafts equipment comes out, he immediately relaxes and smiles.

Arts and crafts have also helped the people we support to stay positive during the pandemic. It’s been a method of encouraging residents to socialise with staff and their housemates. Staff saw that completing an activity or piece of art gave residents a real sense of accomplishment.

“All of the residents at 60 Cobham Road are non-verbal and I really feel that being creative is a great way to express their feelings and mood. For example, Beresford will always choose a dark colour to begin with if he was feeling anxious and by the time he finished, he’d be smiling and using a light colour.”

Service Manager, 60 Cobham Road

Here’s a selection of some of the creations from 60 Cobham Road over the last year:

If you’d like to find out more about how we can support you or a loved one please call our friendly enquiry team on 0800 035 3776 or email them at referrals@voyagecare.com.

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• Cobham Road
• LDWeek2021
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