Patrick Carbery: creating a supergroup

Tell us about your group…

Our charity Extra Care runs 14 retirement (independent living) villages around the country. At St Oswald’s in Gloucester, we’ve got 200 residents and as activities coordinator, it’s part of my job to arrange a programme of events and outings for the group. They can join in as much or as little as they want. We do a range of things, but we also co-ordinate trips.

The reason why we’re called the ‘Day Trippers’ is because we’ve merged with another group of the same name. We have a resident who had been organising trips for years, which included holidays abroad. She had her own group, the Day Trippers, and as she was getting that little bit older, she was finding it harder to continue her work.

So, we had a chat with her and the group have now joined with us. We communicate with them by email to let them know what we’ve got coming up. We’ve found that by combining the groups, we’re able to comfortably fill the coaches we need, and it’s allowed us to bring new people into the mix that’s been great for residents.

What trips have you got planned for this year?

We’ve got five trips planned - or six, if you include a ‘Turkey & Tinsel’ day at Christmas. We did the first one a few weeks ago, a ride on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway. We took a coach to Cheltenham Race Course Station, boarded the steam train from there to Broadway, spent a few hours in Broadway, and then came back. It was a fantastic day out. It’s a big tourist attraction here and I can see why.

We’ve also just recently taken a full coach to Highclere Castle & Gardens. Everyone who attended really enjoyed exploring the castle and its ground. There was also a fascinating Egyptian exhibition, which told the story of the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun, that I know everyone loved.

We’re going to Wells in Somerset for a day to visit the markets. We’re also going on a trip to the Black Country Living Museum later in the year, which I did several years ago and thoroughly enjoyed.

What’s been your stand-out trip to date?

The steam railway this year must be up there with one of the best trips we’ve done. It was lovely because we did it a few days before VE Day so there was a lot of anniversary celebrations going on.

There were school children dressed as evacuees and German spies running up and down the carriages. It was great fun and the feedback from the group was great too.

How do you go about organising trips for the group?

I put out a survey to all our residents at the start of the year to ask where they would like to go, and I also give them about 15 suggestions to give them some inspiration. From there, we look at the response and we plan trips around the most common suggestions.

Last year, there was demand for a seaside trip, so we did a day visit to Weston-Super-Mare, which was lovely. We’re going there again this year as the group seemed to really enjoy it.

We also do a few theatre trips which can be difficult to organise. This is partly because of the cost of the tickets and the added cost of transport. We also need to factor in the fact that we need a coach with a built-in lift for residents with mobility requirements.

When it comes to theatre trips, there is the added complexity of finding a show that everyone wants to see and can fit to their availability. Some won’t be able to go on certain days because they have classes booked in, and some won’t go because they don’t like musicals. Some will want to see Shakespeare and others won’t.

I remember we did a trip to see Sister Act at the theatre in Cheltenham, which is only 12 miles away so it ticked a lot of our boxes. You can’t please everybody, so we try to come up with a solution that works for the majority.