Innovative Activity #6: Chat & Nibble Cafe

When researching activities to do with geriatric patients, a lot had to do with socializing or the groups were very small.  From reading other articles and from my own experience of volunteering at a nursing home, it's very hard to get residents to come out of their room and participate in leisure.  Some of the reasons are that they feel it's such a hassle to get out of bed if they can't do it on their own and others are not independent in a wheelchair and need someone to push them.  The healthcare center that I volunteer at is very good about getting residents from their rooms and making sure they ask everyone if they would like to participate in that afternoons activities.  Besides Bingo, the program that gets the most attendence is music or social hour in the dining room. 

I found an activity that goes along with the socializing aspect and incorporates music.  It's called "Chat and Nibble Cafe".  It's a very general activity so you could adapt it however you want and change the name to be specific to your place of employment, etc. 

Here is the activity write up for Chat & Nibble Cafe:

Chat & Nibble Cafe
submitted by Kathy Stone of Elmwood Care Centreon on June 01, 2003

Equipment: kitchen made afternoon snacks, coffee, juice, CD player, upbeat music

Objective: To gather a group for socialization, interaction, and to supplement nutrition.

Description: We continually had poor turnout for snacks in the afternoon, until I came up with the idea for a different setting. We had cheap white paper place mats printed at the local paper with Chat & Nibble Cafe across them with a checkerboard, we wear checkered aprons and serve the snacks cafe style. Jazzy upbeat music brings people to see what is going on. Snacks are served and we grew from a few residents coming to the dining area for a snack in the afternoon to an average of 30 residents in a 100 bed facility coming to join the fun. We do treat it as a cafe too, we wait on people and visit while we serve. This has been a hit and the administration is very happy with the activity. It is great that people are now getting their afternoon snacks and we try to really target the residents that are having trouble maintaining their weight or have other weight issues.

You don't really need any out of the ordinary materials.  All you need is a snack made from the kitchen, a boombox to play music or live entertainment, and then utensils for eating and drinking.  At the healthcare center that I volunteer at they always have live entertainment usually once a week, at least they try.  The room is PACKED by the time that I arrive and everyone is all smiles and sings along.  Just this past Monday they had a man that came in and played the accordian; playing mostly christmas songs, everyone knew all the words and could easily sing along.  Other times they have a choir come in a sing older jazzy songs or another man comes in and plays polka songs on the accordian.  When the polkas play, you can tell some of the residents want to get out of their wheelchair so bad and dance to the music. 

The cafe activity allows everyone to come out of their rooms and socialize with others.  Socializing might not seem like a big deal but it is once you get older because sometimes residents become self-conscious about their memory loss or how the conversation might go.  Once everyone is there you could use this acitivty as a segway into other programs going on for the afternoon since a lot of people are out of their rooms.  One thing I learned in my psychology class is that elderly feel better and are happier when they have choices instead of feeling helpless when they are forced to do things; that's the only thing I can think of as far as special considerations.  Hillview Healthcare Center utilizes this because before the residents are transported back to their rooms they are given an option of going to the acitivites and there is higher participation.  Of course, another incentive of this activity is the coffee and snack :)