The grant for my care home singing sessions ends in October. How do I stop without it feeling like I am abandoning the residents?

#1mikeatthepiano(Joined Feb 2025 · 21 posts)September 21, 2026, 4:40 pm

Slightly the wrong way round for this section, since I am the one running the sessions rather than a relative, but it is the residents and families I am worried about.

One of my homes has been funded through a small arts grant for eighteen months. The grant ends on 24 October and the home has told me straight that they cannot pay for it out of their own budget. So in five weeks the Thursday singing stops.

There is one lady in particular who asks the staff every morning whether it is Thursday. Her daughter told me it is the only day of the week she can name. I do not know how to end this. Do I tell the residents? Many of them will not remember being told. Do I do a big last session or slip away quietly? Is it better to leave them with a recording? I have done this work for years and nobody has ever told me how it is supposed to end, because usually it just stops.

#2Marion K.(Joined Jul 2024 · 38 posts)September 22, 2026, 8:55 am

Speaking as a relative: please tell the families, even if you cannot meaningfully tell the residents. When my brother's group finished we found out from a carer two weeks after it had happened. It was not the ending that upset me. It was finding out sideways.

#3linkworker_sam(Joined Oct 2025 · 14 posts)September 23, 2026, 1:10 pm

I see this from the other end constantly. The courses I refer to run on short blocks and most of them just stop. Things that make it less bad, from what I have seen:

Give the home a date in writing, early, so the activities staff can plan something for Thursdays after. Ask whether any of the staff would carry on a short singalong on Thursdays even without you, and leave them the songs that worked, the words in large print, the keys. And tell the families, as Marion says.

I would also try the grant body and the local council arts officer before you give up on the funding. Not guaranteed. Occasionally works.

#4Yusuf A.(Joined Aug 2025 · 17 posts)September 27, 2026, 7:30 pm

My father's music therapist planned the ending of her block at the very first meeting, before we had paid anything. At the time I thought it was odd. Now I think it was the most professional thing she did. I know you are not a therapist, but the bit where somebody decided in advance what the last session was for seems to me like it would work for a singing group too.

#5mikeatthepiano(Joined Feb 2025 · 21 posts)October 6, 2026, 8:25 pm

Thank you all. Update for anyone in the same spot.

Wrote to every family with a date, three weeks' notice. Two of them rang me, which I did not expect, and one has offered to come in on Thursdays and lead a singalong herself if I leave her the words. The activities coordinator is going to keep a Thursday music slot with the recordings and the large print sheets, which I have now made, all forty two songs, in the keys that work for that room.

I asked the grant body. No. Asked the council arts officer. Possibly something in the spring, nothing promised.

Last session is the 23rd. Not a big farewell, everyone advised against that and I think rightly. Just the usual songs, with the daughter and the volunteer in the room so the residents see the faces that will still be there on the Thursday after. And I have told the lady who asks whether it is Thursday that it still will be.