English Chess Forum

'This is a long shot, but my mum is in the Spires Care home in Lichfield and some of the residents want to learn/play chess but the activities lady doesn’t play and doesn’t know anyone who does.

They need a volunteer to spend some time with the residents to teach them/play and I was wondering if you knew of anyone locally who may be able to help.'

(I would do it myself though I live down south)

An email I received this morning (they got my contact details from a Facebook post I did about Abbots Bromley Chess Club), if anyone is interested or has any questions/advice please let me know and please feel free to pass it around!

It's an interesting question. My club was contacted several months ago by a care home in Isleworth who wanted to do something on these lines for National Chess Day. I replied offering to help, and also gave them the CSC link below, but didn't hear from them again.

Chess in Schools & Communities have some experience in this field.

https://www.chessinschools.co.uk/older-people

I would guess - and there are other forum members who probably know a lot more than I do about working with people with dementia - that this might be very helpful for anyone who played chess a lot in the past. For residents who haven't played before it may well be preferable to teach them simpler games. For example, just 8 pawns each: the winner is the first player to get a pawn to the end. Games like this are often used to teach chess to young children.

One issue is that those who don't play chess themselves are unaware of the complexity of the game.

Peter Hornsby wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 18, 2021 3:21 pm

'This is a long shot, but ....

I second the suggestion of contacting CSC. When I was involved with them their provision was very lumpy - quite extensive in some areas, not much going on at all in others. I don't know how they are in/near Lichfield but it's an obvious first port of call.

Then there's the idea of going to local chess clubs. Obviously you'll find chess players there. But that doesn't mean you'll find people with the interest/time/skills required to run a successful programme in a residential home. Still worth a go, of course.

Other 'non-chess' avenues:
what other local organisations in the care sector (for want of a better phrase) exist? Do they have anybody with an interest in chess? When I first started working in social work in the early 1990s I worked for an organisation that worked with homeless people. However, for an hour a week they let me visit a guy living in a residential unit for people with mental health issues - for the simple reason that they couldn't find any volunteer good enough to play him. (He was decent club standard).

Don't forget that to teach beginners chess you don't have to be good at chess. Teaching skills and interest in the people you're teaching is much more important. Armed with a beginners' book - Richard James' for example - and some enthusiasm practically anybody could potentially make a good chess coach in the circumstances. There will be a local volunteers bureau or similar. They will be able to put you in touch with people who are willing to volunteer.

Do you have local universities or colleges? They often have schemes that attempt to put volunteers in touch with people who need them. Is there a local University of the Third Age chapter? They're used to running groups already. They might be able to be persuaded to run a specialist group in a particular residential home. Back in the day it would have been worth going to the local library to see how they might be able to help with finding somebody - but I'm not sure so many of them are still functioning in the way that they used to.


As for the general idea of chess programmes in residential homes/for older people in general, I think this is very much a good idea. When I get a moment, I'll throw in a few more thoughts, but to be honest I still don't think you can beat something Dr Coyle wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003.

... participation in cognitively demanding leisure activities in late life may provide protection against dementia,
...
Determining the relative contributions of genes that confer risk and environmental factors such as effortful mental activity to the pathogenesis of dementia remains an important but unrealized goal in research on dementia. In the meantime, seniors should be encouraged to read, play board games, and go ballroom dancing, because these activities, at the very least, enhance their quality of life, and they might just do more than that.

See http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.c ... coyle.html for the full reference.