Fancy footwork helps bridge generation gap at Pendine Park

A lively tea dance was the crowd-pleasing finale of a new college course designed to bridge the generation gap between teenage students and residents.

The fun event included a laugh-a-minute Laurel and Hardy sketch and The Andrews Sisters tribute performance on a bill of 1940s style entertainment.

The show in which students danced, sang and recited poems, marked the culmination of a series of vocational study sessions by Coleg Cambria health and social care students at Pendine Park's Hillbury and Gwern Alyn care homes in Hillbury Road, Wrexham.

This year was the first time the course has been run, with students visiting the home for one day a week over seven months. It gave them a practical insight into working with elderly people and dementia patients, and it forged strong bonds between students and the elderly residents they came to know as friends.

The course has been such a success that there are now plans to repeat it.

Ann Farr, centre manager at the Pendine Academy training centre, said: "We have an ongoing link with Coleg Cambria and have provided individual work placements for social care students in the past. But for 2016 we decided to offer a group course, helping equip more students with the basic skills required for a career in the care sector.

"We have been delighted with the way it has gone, both the warm welcome our elderly residents gave the students, and the way the students reciprocated this with genuine respect and consideration for residents they have helped care for."

Labour Party Welsh Assembly candidate, Lesley Griffiths, who was invited to the tea dance as a special guest, praised the innovation behind the college course.

She said: "The collaboration between Coleg Cambria and Pendine Park is an excellent idea with very real benefits for all concerned. It is refreshing to see so many young people here today and to know that a course such as this exists, where students can truly interact with people on all sides of the care spectrum. It can only be a good thing and provides a solid groundwork for ever better levels of residential care in the future."

Claire Williams, Pendine Park's lead course tutor thanked fellow staff who helped guide and supervise students.

She said: "We used the mornings as study sessions, looking at topics such as communication skills, health and hygiene issues, and how we build social, recreational and enrichment programmes into the daily life of residents. Then in the afternoons students would interact with residents and put the lessons learned in the mornings into practice."