Organising activities for residents of a care home can often be a soul destroying job.

You arrange various events but only a handful ever seem to want to participate.

You feel like the residents don’t want to join in and, as a result, you can often feel your efforts have not achieved anything.

But you have to understand that this is simply not the case.

Too many people forget that every resident at Broomgrove – and any other care home for that matter – had a totally different kind of life before they arrived.

They holidayed in different places; had totally different leisure pursuits and pastimes.

Some were the life and soul of the party, some preferred to stay home and watch TV and others preferred the company of close family – everyone was different.

Care home residents don’t lose their likes and loves –  it’s up to the care home to rediscover them and work extra hard to find the kinds of things they enjoy.

So that’s why at Broomgrove we have a very wide range of activities and we focus on what individuals want to do. So it doesn’t matter if you only have a small group – it’s expected.

The golden rule is don’t get frustrated, just focus on what a resident likes.

We employ three different activity coordinators, each with their own skills. We find this is very helpful way to provide the find of pastimes that residents want.

Moira is brilliant with knitting, painting and arty type stuff. Kay is a fabulous musician and is great with music therapy. Denise is great fun and wonderful at taking residents for walks and doing one-to-one activities like playing cards.

As well as having in house activities we also buy in a lot of entertainment and have a minibus so we can take residents places.

We organised a trip to  South Yorkshire’s Tropical Butterfly House a few days ago. That was a wonderful event. Seven residents out of 37 went.  It’s not unusual to have that many people on a trip.

We raise the money for entertainment ourselves through things like our Summer Fayre.

I think every single resident deserves quality entertainment  tailored to their own taste in their later years.  Care homes should do all in their power to provide it.

Broomgrove’s staff member of the month on the Support Services side is Kay Nicholson. She has been with us for 12 years – firstly as a Care Assistant, then an Activities Coordinator, and now as our In-House Trainer and Music Therapist. She’s a very valued asset and you’ll hear her sing-a-longs every Thursday, brightening up the home!

Choosing a care home for a person you love – very possibly a parent who looked after you and brought you up – is one of the most difficult decisions you can ever face.

Where do you start? Looking for a care home is normally only done as a last resort – when a person can no longer be cared for at home and all other options are exhausted.

Read our manager Donna Pierpoint’s column in the Sheffield Star – How to choose a care home.

I find it upsetting that we live in a society that’s riddled with age discrimination. I’ve devoted my working life to caring for the elderly and I’m frankly ashamed that a person can be refused a life changing operation or drugs because of their age. Despite being outlawed, ageism is still a massive problem in great swathes of society.

I often think it’s the fact I grew up largely without having a relationship with my own grandparents and missed out on that loving bond, that has given me the passion to champion the care and respect of old people. My grandad from my father’s side died when I was three; I never knew my grandad from my mother’s side and my Polish grandma from her mother’s side didn’t speak a word of English. At Broomgrove I’m entrusted with the care of scores of the region’s grandmas and grandads and my primary focus is making a positive and lasting difference to their lives.

One of the biggest thrills of my time at Broomgrove over the past few weeks was bringing closure to the death of Dorothy Sharp’s brother, 70 years after he went missing. She never knew what happened to him in the last hours of his life and, because he was lost at sea in World War Two, there was never a grave for her to visit. We managed to find out exactly what happened to him and even discovered a memorial to him in Sheffield – at the school both Dorothy, now 89-years-old, and her brother attended in the 1930s. We took her on a trip to visit it recently. She was absolutely thrilled – it was lovely to see.

I’ve now had 20 years experience in care homes – with over decade of those as manager – and it’s my mission to make the happiness of residents as important as the exemplary care they receive – I truly believe that should be the goal for any home. Though Broomgrove has a fantastic reputation for its nursing, its standards and it’s palliative care I’ve had the luxury of seeing examples of best practice from up and down the country and I’m continually introducing subtle changes in the way we do things to improve life still further.

No care home should ever become complacent. Residents should have as much independence as they want and a care home’s service should be tailored to them – not the other way around!

Donna Pierpoint is the manager of Sheffield’s renowned Broomgrove Nursing Home. She has 20 years experience in the sector, a decade of those as care home manager.

We spend our entire career paying into the NHS but at the point in our life when we most need their help, we have to pay.

And we’re not talking a few pounds – we’re talking tens of thousands of pounds, even hundreds of thousands in some cases.

People are given no choice but to sell their home to pay for the care they need in their old age.

This is the thing they’ve saved for their entire life and it’s the one thing they hope their children will inherit. But they’re given no option but to sell it.

There are ways of protecting some money, but they are bound by so many rules and very difficult to put in place, that most people don’t know about it. It’s often too late.

I think it’s a disgusting situation.

I’m the manager of a care home and I know I could never afford the care we provide – it’s crazy!

The actual cost of care has been questioned a lot in the media of late.

That’s an area of the debate I can agree on. I know exactly how much it costs to deliver good quality care.

Broomgrove Nursing Home is renowned for giving one of the highest nurse to resident ratios in the region – it’s one of the thing we pride ourselves on most – but it comes at a very high financial cost.

It’s same with everything else we provide. It all comes at a cost.

In three years time care homes are going to have to be far more transparent about their charges. At the moment, many are not.

I think transparency can only be a good thing.

A lot of privately run care homes will be running scared when they realise information on the amounts paid to shareholders will be readily available for all to see.

Broomgrove is the region’s only home with charitable status.

That means we have no shareholders and we’re totally committed to providing a quality service for our residents rather than being profit driven.

If we make a surplus at the end of the year it is ploughed straight back into the service we provide.

New rules coming into play in 2017 are set to cap the amount that any one person needs to contribute at £70,000. This is still a massive amount.

As usual, it’s the older generation being penalised.

I won’t be happy until every single old person gets free, round the clock care for every day of their life they need it.

They’ve paid for their NHS service – why aren’t they entitled to it when they most need it?