Ameet Kotecha Explains: Life Enrichment vs Activities in Care Homes
By Ameet Kotecha , Founder, Boutique Care Homes
When I look back at why I founded Boutique Care Homes, it starts with my parents. Watching them age, I wished they’d experienced a richer quality of life in their later years. Too many older people, whether in residential settings or their own homes, face boredom, loneliness, and the mental health struggles that follow.
You want more for the people you love. I genuinely believe that life should be lived fully, right until the end.
When designing our homes, we asked ourselves: How do we help residents truly thrive, not just receive care?
The answer wasn’t adding more care home activities to a weekly schedule. It was embedding wellness into daily life, nurturing mind, body, and soul. Creating an experience-driven environment where living fully is the priority.
That’s the purpose of our Life Enrichment Programme.
The Six Principles of Wellbeing
Our Life Enrichment Programme is built on six principals of wellbeing. Every experience, event, and moment is shaped to fulfil at least one of these, touching on emotional, social, spiritual, physical, and educational aspects of a personalized, meaningful life.
- Contribute – Residents take part in fundraising, community connections, and intergenerational work. This builds self-worth and helps them feel they’re giving back and staying part of society.
- Grow – Learning continues through memory work, discussions, cultural experiences, and educational sessions. Residents keep developing skills and sharing what they know.
- Reflect – We support inner peace through spiritual care, personal values, and purpose. This includes faith-based connections, discussion circles, and cognitive support.
- Feel – Emotional expression matters. Through art, music, reminiscence, and sensory experiences, residents explore their feelings in safe, inclusive ways.
- Move – Physical engagement, from walking and dancing to chair-based exercise, Pilates, and sports, keeps bodies active, independence longer, and health stronger.
- Connect – Social bonds form through dining together, entertainment, outings, celebrations, clubs, and family time, reducing loneliness and anxiety.
- This isn’t a checklist of care home activities. It’s a complete framework ensuring everyone can participate in ways that resonate with who they are.
What This Looks Like in Practice
At Chartwell House, musician Charlie’s Tune leads dementia-friendly sessions combining vocals, guitar, instruments, and singing. These aren’t passive performances, residents join in, share memories, and express emotion through sound.
This embodies Feel (emotional release via music), Connect (group participation), and Reflect (triggering personal history and nostalgia).
At The Burlington, Peggy runs creative workshops where residents explore artistic projects. She sets the direction, then supports each person individually. Residents develop manual skills, gain confidence, and feel proud of what they create.
At Brampton Manor, Lifestyle Teams design intergenerational experiences bringing residents together with younger visitors. Stories flow, laughter builds, and knowledge passes between generations.
Daily schedules bend to how people feel, not institutional routines. This flexibility defines life enrichment, it responds to individuals, not the other way around.
Never Too Late to Fulfil a Dream
A cornerstone of our programme is the belief that dreams don’t expire. Big or small, wishes deserve pursuit. Fulfilling them strengthens wellbeing, builds self-worth, and creates profound satisfaction.
Our teams work to make these dreams real. When exact matches aren’t possible, we get creative and deliver something meaningful instead.
I’ve witnessed residents rediscover passions dormant for decades. I’ve seen them attempt things they’d always imagined but never pursued. That’s what experience-driven living delivers, moments with weight and meaning.
Resident-Led, Not Team-Driven
Traditional care home activities are designed by team for residents. Life enrichment is co-created with residents.
Regular meetings invite everyone to contribute thoughts, requests, and ideas on care home activities. We also build individual relationships, learning each person’s history, hobbies, and preferences, what brought them joy years ago, what they’ve always wanted to explore, what comforts them now.
This feedback directly shapes programming. Calendars reflect actual interests, capabilities, and desires. Residents aren’t receiving a service, they’re directing their own experience.
That’s dignity in action.
Why This Approach Works
Our Life Enrichment Programme delivers tangible results, not just philosophy.
Physical health improves. Active living supports healthy ageing. Movement helps manage chronic illness, strengthens bones and muscles, eases pain, and extends independence.
Mental wellbeing rises. Social bonds reduce stress, ease anxiety, lower depression risk, boost self-esteem, and create belonging.
Cognitive function strengthens. Mental stimulation sharpens memory, enhances reasoning, and generates achievement.
Chartwell House earned the 2025 Dementia Friendly Community Project Award for this exact approach, demonstrating that clinical quality and authentic warmth work together, not against each other.
Families report that their loved ones wake with purpose instead of following routines. Visits become something to anticipate, enjoying care home activities together. They watch parents, grandparents, and spouses genuinely live again.
It’s About More Than Support. It’s About Life.
Care shouldn’t stop at safety, nutrition, and medication. Those are foundations. The real question: What quality of life are residents experiencing?
- Are they engaged or bored?
- Connected or isolated?
- Thriving or simply existing?
Life enrichment answers these questions. It ensures that ageing and physical or cognitive challenges don’t stop people from living fully, contributing, growing, connecting, feeling, moving, reflecting through varied, meaning care home activities.
Because life is meant to be lived. Our responsibility is keeping that true for everyone, always.
About Ameet Kotecha
Ameet Kotecha is the Founder and Managing Director of Boutique Care Homes, an award-winning group of care homes across South East England. Since founding Boutique Care Homes in 2019, Ameet Kotecha has championed family-centred care, life enrichment, and team culture excellence. Under Ameet Kotecha’s leadership, Boutique Care Homes has earned multiple national awards including Care Home Group (Small) of the Year at the 25th and 27th National Care Awards. Ameet Kotecha’s vision is rooted in personal experience caring for family members and a commitment to ensuring every resident lives life to the full.
Click here to read more about Boutique Care Home’ Founder Ameet Kotecha.