Reading Sessions to Help Older People

As part of the Get Into Reading project, volunteer Angela Macmillan has been visiting the Birkenhead Road nursing centre to help with ‘read aloud’ group sessions. The project includes more than 250 groups in the country.

Ms Macmillan has been running her reading group for older people at Hoylake Cottage every Thursday afternoon. A fellow volunteer, Marianne Kelly, runs a weekly reading group for older people with dementia, also at Hoylake Cottage.

Angela’s weekly efforts would consist of reading a poem and short story aloud to the group. This would then be followed by a discussion of how the week’s reading made the hearers feel and what memories it would stir in them.

Ms Macmillan said about the readings: “… we’re finding that it has a significant impact on older people’s emotional health, concentration and memory.”

According to a report in the Wirral News, Angela and Marianne were impressed by the way in which the group responded to the hearing. There was one occasion when a lady who hadn’t spoken for four months began to tap the table to the rhythm of the poem reading. She then began to talk about waves on the shore.

This was just one example of the benefit of these readings; there would always be something to make each reading special and beautiful.

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