How Spring Meadow Is Planning to Celebrate Christmas
Christmas at Spring Meadow is about the limitless possibilities.
Christmas at Spring Meadow is still taking shape. It lives, for now, in conversations, careful planning, and the first decorations placed with intention. On the day the service officially opened its doors for visitors, I interviewed the team leaders Chloe, Caitlin, and Mary, alongside Dawn, Deputy Manager, and Amanda, Registered Manager. It became clear that the Christmas festive season has become a way of explaining not just how the service will celebrate, but how it hopes to care.
From the outset, the very obvious difference is space. Speaking about what sets Spring Meadow apart, Chloe, Team Leader, returns to this repeatedly. “The very obvious one is the space,” she says. “It’s nice to have more space for everybody to break out, staff to break out, young people, everyone’s got space.”
That physical openness, Caitlin, also a Team Leader, explains, changes what is possible day to day. “We’ve got a bigger space… more capacity for young people, and more facilities to support young adults with different disabilities and needs.”
At their current service, Christmas required caution. Chloe describes how celebration has had to fit around practical constraints. “We do decorate. We do have a tree,” she says, “but we’re quite limited in terms of where we can put it, so that it can stay in one place and stay in one piece.”
Spring Meadow changes that entirely. “Here, you could do the front garden, the back garden,” Chloe adds. “There’s so much more space to decorate and make it more festive.”
Looking ahead, Caitlin talks about how the team imagines future Christmases once the service is fully up and running. “When we spoke about what we’re going to do next year,” she says, “it’s decorating the whole service, the bedrooms, outside, even doing our own little Grotto… making it more of an experience for the young people, not just having decorations.”
For Mary, Team Leader, the new environment also creates opportunities to bring people together. “We’ve talked about doing events and having other services come to us,” she explains. “We have the space to do that now, like Christmas parties.”
At a leadership level, the focus is firmly on involvement rather than display. Amanda, Registered Manager, emphasises that Christmas should be something young people actively shape. “They’ll be more involved because of the space,” she says. “There’ll be something for everybody, not just a Christmas tree.”
That participation links closely to independence and wellbeing. Gardening becomes a recurring theme, even in festive reflections. Chloe describes plans for the outdoor space in detail. “The young people can grow their own fruit and veg, plant them, watch them grow, bring them in, cut them,” she explains. “They can see that process of healthy eating.”
Dawn, Deputy Manager, builds on this, linking everyday skills to longer-term outcomes. “Being able to grow your own vegetables, your own fruit, then come and cook it yourselves,” she says, “it’s all about promoting their wellbeing and independence.”
Christmas at Spring Meadow is also imagined as inclusive and culturally responsive. Amanda speaks about moving beyond a single-festival mindset. “We’re going to be devising a celebration calendar,” she explains. “Celebrating different festivals, doing food, decorations, whatever else we need to do to help them feel at ease and help them feel at home.”
She also highlights the importance of working closely with families. “Somebody from a different background can show how they celebrate,” Amanda says. “And if young people are non-verbal, we can get that information from families and bring those celebrations into the home as well.”
There is an emotional undertone to how Christmas is discussed, shaped by a long wait for the building to be ready. Both managers describe the atmosphere of Spring Meadow in warm, almost seasonal language. Dawn notes, “It feels very homely; it has that sense of family.” Amanda adds, “It’s holistic, it’s tranquil, it’s calming, it’s beautiful.”
When asked to sum up the service in a single word, Amanda, Registered Manager, says “magical,” before adding that it is ultimately about “making a difference.”
Dawn, Deputy Manager, follows with a line that captures the spirit of the season perfectly: “I would say it’s Christmas.”
For a team that has grown together within Progress, this moment matters. The reflections of Chloe, Caitlin, and Mary on a year of transitions sit alongside leadership’s vision for what comes next.
There is realism, too. Dawn acknowledges the scale of change ahead. “It will be overwhelming at first for the staff,” she says. “But once we put that at ease, I think they’ll blossom.”
Christmas at Spring Meadow is still unfolding. But through the voices of its team leaders, deputy manager and registered manager, it already feels like something more than a season — a statement of what this new home is meant to be.
