Friends of Milliner House

The service offers residents of Milliner House Care Home a range of goods to purchase including books, music records, cards, toiletries, gifts, and sweets. The residents can make independent choices and treat themselves or their loved ones by choosing items from the “shop on wheels”.

Not only does Trolley Service respond to residents’ need of purchasing basic goods, but it also provides an opportunity to chat with volunteers on duty. Visiting the residents’ room on a regular basis allows volunteers to engage with residents and brighten their day with a chat. Conversation – a seemingly simple act – can make a great impact on an elderly person’s sense of well-being. The Trolley Service also captures some of the elements of life happening outside of the care home which residents long for the most. Incidental chit-chats resulting from the service stand a chance to become a beginning of friendships and meaningful relationships between residents and volunteers, allowing volunteers to play an active role in making residents’ lives more enjoyable.

As part of his role, he is patron of each of the friends groups in care homes.

Pictured here, he is talking to Nichole, project manager, and Kahlil who is newly appointed to the team. He was delighted to hear of the progress to date.

That being said, she devotes her volunteering time to the Milliner House Care Home. Presently, she still volunteers here on a weekly basis and looks at every possible opportunity to attend the volunteer hours, even while she cared for her two parents as well as her son and daughter at the same time. Ellen admires how much love the residents have for her and the warm feeling that surrounds the care home each day she volunteers. She has a lot of specific experience in her personal life of working with people who have dementia, but she spoke about how all of that experience in the hospitals was very much different from her volunteering role at Milliner House.

For many years, she cared for her father who suffered from a stroke as well as her mother who had chronic problems in her leg. Now, she cares for her daughter who has special needs and attends anger management classes with her son. There is a very close correlation to the ways in which she learned how to be more specific and direct when speaking with her son and daughter to how she communicates on a weekly-basis with the residents.

Her time at Milliner House Care Home has been different in many ways from her studies at the University as well as her daily routines at the hospital. She loves seeing how much closer her family has become with each other after she developed different social skills from the interaction with the residents.

At first, Ellen struggled with finding out what the residents loved to do, but after clarifying with staff, her volunteering time became more enjoyable and easier because she was able to put together an agenda of activities or topics to talk about that she knew would excite and energise the residents. Ellen works closely with the activities coordinator now to plan games and events for the clients inside and outside the care home. Her favourite activity to do with the clients inside the care home is art projects because she loves seeing how artistic the clients are and how much they valued art from their childhoods. One day she was told by one of the residents she was painting next to that she had not picked up a paint brush since she was 18 years of age. If Ellen is not painting and chatting away with the clients, she is walking them to the local coffee shop, where she leads conversations about various topics of interest from the clients.

There is no better feeling than a feeling of satisfaction after watching a resident laugh or smile uncontrollably; this particular action certainly could never have any price tag attached to it.Volunteering has helped to increase her confidence and has given her a greater sense of community.