Venn Residential Care Home in Lamerton is launching Community Weekend Days and inviting local people to come and spend an hour with their residents.

The community event for seniors takes place on Saturdays and Sundays (11am to 12pm or 2pm to 3pm), and Benn Davis, owner of the care home, is searching for musicians, magicians, storytellers and friendly pets to come along.

Locals are invited to come along for an hour to “play something, perform something, read something, or simply bring a well behaved pet in for a fuss”.

Whatever you do, “there's a room full of people here who'd love to see you” at Venn Residential Care Home, Benn said.

Benn explained: “It’s so important that our residents feel connected to the community. The idea of Community Weekend Days is to allow them to engage with local residents through interaction.

“An hour in a day, can bring so much joy, so whether this is someone bringing a guitar, or a card trick, just talking about a topic, or a dog that likes being made a fuss of, and suddenly there's a room full of people talking to each other about it for the rest of the day.

“We're a small home in Lamerton with 19 residents, and what they value most is contact with the world outside our front door. That's the real point of this, it's connection.”

And it works both ways, Benn said that people who come in expecting to give something up for an hour tend to leave having got rather more back.

Benn added: “Our residents have led remarkable lives, and they're very good company. If anyone locally has ever thought they'd like to do something useful nearby but wasn't sure where to start, this is about as easy as it gets."

The opportunity to get involved is ongoing, if you’re interested in participating, send an email to: [email protected]