Woodlands Manor 5 Stars

On Wednesday afternoon, the 17th of July 2024 I drove down to Woodland Manor to celebrate my wife’s seventy-eighth birthday. On entering the care home I observed that there was no sign of any birthday celebration preparations. We were then approached by the deputy manager who made enquiries about our birthday party preferences and wishes for her birthday celebration. And we elected to have it in the kitchen room at three o’clock.
I entered the kitchen alone to make a cup of coffee for her and found the staff extremely busy setting out a large white tablecloth; with a huge birthday cake in the centre of the table. With my wife’s name in wonderful pink icing. All the staff were busy putting birthday decorations around the room. They were working hard, doing a wonderful job making a ‘my wife’s style’ birthday party celebrations. The cook entered the room and enquired if the cake with the pink-iced name of my wife upon it was okay? Which it was! A marvellous cake of a large, square design and covered with birthday candles.
I got my wife settled in the kitchen and sitting at the head of the large table. The deputy manager lit all the candles on the birthday cake. And with a little more effort got my reluctant and confused wife to blow out the candles and make a birthday wish, wish a helping ‘puff and blow’ of directed breath from myself.
All the residents and staff sang happy birthday to her, raising their glasses to toast her on her seventy-eighth birthday. Assistant manager produced a large, decorate knife for my wife to cut her birthday cake, which she did with some assistance from me. It then became too noisy for her and she became confused and distraught then standing up from her chair, she made movement to leave the room and birthday party.
I took her into the quiet dining room to get her settled leaving the staff and residents in the kitchen room to cut, distribute and eat the birthday cake and enjoy the birthday party.
The home manager walked into the dining room to ascertain the reason for my wife’s absence from the main birthday party, and also to present her with a lovely birthday card from herself and all the care home staff. A member of staff brought three portions of birthday cake into the dining room for us to eat. We sang happy birthday to her before and after eating our slice of birthday cake and she slowly recovered her good humour.
I cannot thank enough; the Woodland Manor care staff, the deputy manager whose attention to detail and who organised and controlled the attentive staff, the senior cook who made such a wonderful birthday cake, and who then enquired if it was satisfactory, which of course in was for the proof was in the eating of the birthday cake, for not a crumb remained on the empty plate. Also the home manger who walked into the empty dining room to ascertain the reason for my wife’s absence from the main birthday party, for my wife suffers from vascular dementia, becomes confused and overwhelmed during noisy events. Then in the quiet of the dining room, gaining her full attention, the manager presented my wife with a lovely birthday card from herself and all the staff of Woodland Manor. It was a wonderful day and a marvellous birthday party, under the difficult condition due to her poor mental health, all made possible by all the staff of Woodland Manor. Thank you all.