Fit-baw’s in the home
Monday 14th October 2019

healthandcare.scot hears about the care home residents getting a kick out of a football-based activity programme.

For nearly a year, people living at Craigielea care home in Renfrewshire have been taking part in a programme combining leg and arm exercises using a futsal, a heavier football, with music.

Wellbeing co-ordinator Jenni Mack says one resident told her he “forgets that he’s doing exercise because he’s having so much fun.”

Fit-baw is the brain-child of Paul Mooney, who founded the business earlier this year.

“We just tried it once,” says Jenni, “and we’ve had him in every week ever since.”

The sessions “definitely uplift mood,” for residents with dementia, she adds. “Paul plays music while they’re doing it as well, it lifts their spirits a lot.

“You actually see them starting to do the next exercise even though they haven’t been told to do the next one yet, because they know the repetition of it.”

Craigelea hosts two sessions, one for dementia residents and one for young people with disabilities – each is tailored to physical ability levels.

Paul, from Clydebank, works as a school football coach admits he wasn’t sure fit-baw would be a success:

“When you go into somewhere new, a lot of the time in the first five ten minutes you always doubt yourself and think ‘oh I don’t know if this is going to work’.

“But after the first 5 or 10 mins they start to get into the routine. We play music in the background so once they get the hang of that then we really get into it.

“I don’t really think there’s anyone who’s not got off it and given it praise. Each individual resident gets something different and it seems to be really well-received.”

Paul came up with the idea after seeing the popularity of over-50s walking football and realising there was nothing for older people who might struggle to walk.

After doing a similar scheme in day-care centres for West Dunbartonshire council he decided to take the plunge.

“We were really the only area that was doing that kind of age group,” he says, “So I thought you know what I’d be better just doing it myself in other areas. Just at January, just in the new year, decided to start my own business.”

“We’re now a lot further than I ever really planned. It was started as a part-time business and it’s just taken off.”