Wrestling wish comes true for 97-year old care home resident

Sue Thorne, deputy manager for Katherine House and Griffiths House, recently set up the One Wish Project to make wishes come true for residents. One of the first wishes granted was for 97-year-old Jane Prosser who has a passion for wrestling, born from when she used to go and watch matches with her late husband, Jack.

With the ‘wish challenge’ accepted, the Wellbeing Team were on it! Research led them to a Kapow and Southern Wrestling Foundation (SWF) wrestling match, taking place on 2 October in Thornbury. Kapow wrestling describes itself as the UK’s number one family friendly wrestling federation promising high energy sports entertainment.

Jane, accompanied by two care home assistants Sabrina Green and Imogen Spencer, was thrilled to attend the match and absolutely loved the whole event. Jane said, “We had a brilliant time together, this is a day I will never forget.”

As well as wearing a wrestling mask and waving an inflatable hammer from her seat in the audience, the highlight of Jane’s evening was meeting one of the wrestlers after the match. “So many memories came flooding back to me of evenings out with my beloved husband Jack. We didn’t often manage to get out, but when we did it would more often than not be to watch a wrestling match”.

The One Wish Project is all about supporting the wellbeing of care home residents, by helping them to remember happy times and to achieve unfulfilled ambitions. Another benefit for residents is getting back out into the community after the very difficult lockdown times.

“We love a challenge,” said Sue, “the residents bring us so much joy everyday, we want to give something back to them. We constantly look for ways to push the boundaries and expectations for care home events and activities and the One Wish Project really helps us to deliver on this commitment”.