Christmas could look very different across Ambient services this year. The pandemic has meant that all of the usual Christmas activities, days out and visits from local groups have been cancelled.To boost moral and raise the Christmas spirit amongst its residents and care teams, we launched a festive ‘Crafty Christmas Challenge’ competition.Care teams and residents across the country dusted off their tinsel and shined their baubles to decorate their Christmas trees and create imaginative festive crafts to go head-to-head in a most spectacular fashion.All entries were judged by a panel of service users, many with complex learning disabilities, in the safety of their care homes using Zoom.Millbank care home in Newark, Gardenia House in Dartford, and Short Breaks & Respite in Grantham, were the three lucky winners who received £100 supermarket vouchers to spend on special Christmas goodies.Davina Sellick, Director of Sales, Marketing & Communications was delighted with the response:“Christmas decorations bring joy and help raise the Christmas spirit but having a focus and a challenge across the charity has been a really lovely way of bringing everyone together. It has been wonderful to see the fantastic efforts of our brilliant care teams and residents.“Millbank spectacularly decorated not one but three Christmas trees, each with festive characters by their side including reindeer, Father Christmas and snowmen. The residents also designed some gorgeous colourful paper decorations- these especially caught the eye of our judging panel.” “Gardenia House decided to turn their white Christmas tree into a huge snowman, adorning lots of smaller snowmen- the end result looks very striking, it’s a very clever idea.” “Grantham Short Breaks & Respite care home thought outside of the box and alongside their Christmas trees, created an ingenious snowman for the garden made from car tyres. It’s such a brilliant and different idea, the judging panel absolutely loved it!” To see more updates and stories like this from Ambient, Find and Follow us on Facebook!To talk to us about what you need and how we can help, please get in touch. 020 8502 3933 hello@ambient.org.uk