Children don high visibility vests and hard hats for new care home site visit

School children from St Clement’s C of E Primary School have donned high visibility vests and hard hats for a visit to the site of a new leading care home in Worcester.

The site in St John’s in Worcester is the location of Sanctuary Care’s Juniper House Residential and Nursing Home. The home is part of a £22 million investment by Sanctuary Care into the supported housing development, known as Sanctuary Grove, Sanctuary Care’s biggest care development project so far.

The schoolchildren visited the site to get inspiration for artwork that will be buried in a time capsule on the site. The children, Ben Portlock, Ruby McCammon and Leif Johnson, were accompanied on the visit by their teacher Tina Brown and received a site tour from Adam Boyce, assistant site manager and Sanctuary Care’s project manager, Sophie Bell.

After the site visit, the pupils will produce artwork to represent what they think life will be like in 60 years’ time and to show people in future how life was in 2014.

Speaking about life in the future, Ben said “I think there will be hover boots that make you fly.” Whilst Leif added: “I think there will be jet propelled hover chairs instead of wheelchairs and rocket stations instead of train stations. I think things will definitely be more high tech.”

Ruby said: “I think doing the time capsule will be really interesting because if we come here when we are older, we may be able to open it and see how different life is in the future.”

The children will return to the site in the New Year and bury their creations in a time capsule, which will be opened in 2075.

Juniper House is due for completion by May 2015 and will offer nursing, residential and dementia care with 60 en-suite rooms and an attractive garden and courtyard.

Ms Brown, said: “The youngsters were thrilled about the prospect of creating artwork for a future generation. I think it’s really interesting for the children and they are really excited about the idea of the time capsule.”

Sanctuary Grove will be made up of a 24 retirement apartments and bungalows, a 60 bed care home and an extra care scheme to accommodate 60 people. Residents the development will have access to a central shared facility and a range of support and care suitable for their needs.

Sanctuary Care’s director of care operations, Stephen Rees said: “We are enormously proud of Juniper House – it will be an absolutely stunning home and one that I believe the people in Worcester will be very impressed with.”

Ms Bell added: “It was a great pleasure to welcome such an enthusiastic group of children along. This will be a flagship development and we really wanted to involve our younger generation in creating a piece of history that the children of 2075 can open.”