Care UK staff and residents sorry to see X Factor John Adeleye knocked out of the finals

Company news

Oct 26, 2010

Care UK’s Forrester Court home in Paddington used to have a particularly talented activity co-ordinator on its payroll - X Factor finalist John Adeleye and yesterday evening the TV lounges were unusually busy a residents waited to hear if John would get through to the next round.
 

John Adeleye’s elimination marks the end of an eventful few weeks for the home. Some of the residents at Forrester Court had even found themselves in the spotlight as the X Factor production team came down to film them with John last month. 

Manager Jemma Craig-Dressekie said: “It was lovely to see John at the filming session last month.  Even though he was by then a household name, he sat and chatted to the residents and helped to make sure that everyone was sitting comfortably.  What was really heart warming to me was that, even with the cameras rolling, John only agreed to sing songs that the residents would know and love.  The whole filming session ended up in a big sing song with lots of residents joining in.”

Care UK’s Regional Director Mike Smith said: “Care UK pioneered the principle of encouraging residents to keep active by doing tasks and hobbies that they have enjoyed previously such as gardening or baking. As well as helping residents to enjoy these everyday pastimes, we have over a hundred activity co-ordinators, like John, who organise events, visits and pastimes for our residents. 

“John’s speciality as a Care UK activity co-ordinator was clearly anything musical and lots of our residents really loved the activities that he led.  He often bought in his guitar and it wasn’t unusual to see our residents up on their feet and dancing or joining in with his singing.”

Care UK’s senior activities coordinator Julius Adesanya said: "We are so proud of John and I’m sure that I speak on behalf of a great many of my 14,000 colleagues in sending our commiserations but still reminding ourselves that he still went further than tens of thousands of other hopefuls.”

Forrester Court is one of 57 homes run by leading independent health and social care company Care UK. It provides long and short term residential and nursing care for those aged over 65 who are physically frail, with high dependency needs, or who have dementia.  It also has a specialist facility for early onset dementia.

Every resident receives very high levels of personal care and is encouraged to live as independent a life as possible in a relaxed and friendly environment.