Bingo with a difference
Like many of our sites, our residents at Castledare love their bingo!
The role of ‘bingo caller’ has been held by two gentlemen from the Castledare Independent Living for over a year. However, during the COVID-19 restrictions, we had to cancel our large group activities and our trusted bingo callers were unable to enter the site.
What were we to do? Our Lifestyle Team adapted quickly by setting up a much smaller bingo group and utilised technology to replace the bingo callers. The use of technology involves a large computer screen which displays the number and a computer program which calls out the numbers at an appropriate volume and pace.
We soon realised that this allowed for greater participation for residents experiencing hearing and visual impairments.
But we’d lost the role of ‘bingo caller’! Our Lifestyle Team had to think about how to respond to changing times with the COVID-19 restrictions easing and our bingo callers returning.
What happened in response to this situation has been very successful!
Our Lifestyle Team worked with the gentlemen from the Castledare Independent Living to record their voices calling out the bingo numbers on the computer program!
Now their roles have slightly changed to running the computer program and our residents have the benefit of hearing their familiar bingo callers, but at a louder volume and seeing the number on the large computer monitor.
