What do we do?

Everyone benefits from learning new things, questioning and reflecting on their knowledge and experience. This stays true as you become old and frail. Sadly, too few elderly people in care have this chance.

Learning for the Fourth Age (L4A) offers each resident a personal learning mentor who will spend time each week with them sharing ideas, information, materials and photos and stimulating their minds. They will design activities to suit the individual’s interests and needs.

Our service makes a real difference to the quality of a resident’s life, and gives them new things to reflect upon, backed up with materials to enjoy between sessions. Research shows there are real benefits to learning, yet care staff rarely have time to offer these personalised one–to–one opportunities.

We train and support our learning mentors so they understand the needs of elderly people and the nature of care homes and their care practice. They are also skilled at relating to residents and designing sessions and materials to suit their interests. How does all of this work in practice? See the case study, below.

Case study: J, a resident

Case Study: J, a resident, lives in a care home for older people in Leicester that has signed up with L4A

An interest assessor started the first session with J through light, social conversation and enabled J to feel comfortable and that his life experiences were valued. In turn, he opened up and freely discussed his interests, previous and existing, and reminisced about his earlier years.

J was then placed with a learning mentor who joined the home’s L4A programme in March 2008. The learning mentor meets with J every week for half an hour to an hour and she plans the sessions to meet the interests of J in gardening, watercolours and social history. This links in greatly with resident J’s life.

The learning mentor talks and shows stimulus photos and materials at a slightly slower pace, which suits J perfectly, and encourages J to talk with others at the home and his relatives who visit occasionally about his interests and what J is doing with his learning mentor. Thus, effective participation of the learning and linking the sessions to how J makes meaning of his life and the residential home or with his relatives is achieved.

The learning mentor reflected that J was hard of hearing and he found it hard to distinguish between direct speech and background noise and so they moved their sessions to a quieter room and it was no longer an issue.

Although J was very interested in gardening and had always kept a garden himself, he seemed reluctant to take up gardening once again and occasionally became quieter when it was mentioned. The learning mentor noticed this, realising that although reminiscing about his garden was enjoyable for J, it was also sad because he missed his garden and his capacity to tend it. Instead, the learning mentor decided to focus on another of his interests. This highlights the important of reflection on the sessions, but also how individual learning methods and techniques need to be for care home residents.