Three members of the team, Caragh Albright (Speech and Language Therapist), Amie Reeves (Speech and Language Therapy Assistant) and Jade Myatt (Assistant Psychologist) produced a delicious 3 tiered birthday cake. They decorated it with words that staff and service users had described the service provision at Elms, such as ‘fun’ and ‘home’. Everyone gathered to sing happy birthday and cut the cake. It was loved by all.
The sun shone throughout the day allowing a festival feel. A bouncy castle provided much entertainment to everyone. There was also sweet treats from the candy floss and slush puppy machines. Elms cooks, Wendy and Seb prepared a delicious spread of food and Rob from Maintenance cooked up a storm at the BBQ.
A live band, Ellie Jones and the Giants, sang pop music for everyone to dance and sing to. One service user even had a song dedicated to her, ‘Isn’t she lovely’, by Stevie Wonder.
Infinity Magic provided magic tricks which shocked and delighted everyone, no one was able to understand how he was able to do the tricks he did!
There was also a visit from Simply Alpacas, who brought along three alpacas. The service users enjoyed feeding them, learning about the animals, taking them for a walk around the garden and couldn’t resist taking a selfie with them.
Everyone also wanted to use the day to raise money for a charity. They chose Shelter as it is a local Birmingham charity. Shelter helps people in housing need by providing advice and practical assistance, and fights for better investment in housing and for laws and policies to improve the lives of homeless and badly housed people.
A raffle was held with many wonderful donations as the prizes including a 100% recycled vegan stationery from Lethally Her, beautiful collections of bracelets from Jewelry quarters, Premier Diamonds, Bungee jump from Buy and Gift and VIP tickets from MADE festival. With the help of these fantastic donations from many generous organisations a fantastic total of £704.25 was raised for Shelter.
Prior to the big day staff and service users also filmed a video to celebrate the 10th birthday. Staff and service users spoke about what makes Elms outstanding and the care that is received. Birthday well wishes and messages from external workers and a service user’s family were included in the video.
The film was premiered at the birthday celebrations with service users and staff gathered in the lounge to watch the video. Service users were happy and proud of the contributions they made.
The whole event made for a really memorable day with one service user saying, “the alpacas were great, the magician was fabulous and everyone joined in and put effort into the cake. Thank you for all staff who organised the day.”
To view more photos from the day click on the images below to enlarge.
