A nursery is opening a new centre in a care home to promote age integration.

Olivers Lodge, in Halstead, is set to be the first early years setting of it's kind in Essex.

Opening its doors at Colne View Care Home on January 7, the nursery will offer both joint and separate activities for the pupils and the residents.

The idea was fuelled by the Channel 4 documentary, "Old People's Homes for 4 Year Olds" which sees one of the UK's biggest retirement villages running a nursery where the classmates' ages range from three to 102.

Kayleigh Thorne, support manager at Olivers Lodge, said: "It's something the owner has talked about doing for a long time.

"Having four year olds in the care home will make a real difference to the early years and the older generation.

"Watching the recent documentary on Channel 4 with the four year olds in the care home, you could see the differences made to the early years, and the older generation were not deteriorating. They were improving their mental and physical wellbeing, their speech and vice versa with the little ones learning from them and doing physical play and reading- getting that one on one attention from adults.

The new Olivers Lodge centre has just been given the go ahead from Ofsted and registration is now open for parents.

Miss Thorne hopes the scheme will be a benefit to children who are unable to spend time with their grandparents every day, as well as elderly people who's families are unable to visit them every day.

She added: "Once the word is out, there is nothing like this.

"I'm really excited, it's going to be amazing.

"I would recommend anyone who hasn't seen the show to watch it."