Nutrition fairy cakes or cookies.
In many homes, residents are encouraged to contribute to decision-making about the meals they eat, which goes beyond a simple ‘tick box’ form selecting their breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the day. Some homes have meals as a discussion topic at regular resident meetings and, as we will discuss, the new generation of care home management technology is providing new and ingenious ways to provide feedback to the kitchen staff. Themed menus have also become common practice, with meals planned to coincide with various cultural celebrations such as Diwali or Eid, national days such as ‘Fish and Chip Day’, food from around the world, or simply special meals to celebrate events such as a resident’s birthday. Some care homes take this idea further and create a ‘restaurant dining’ experience for their residents. A home in Suffolk – Lound Hall – has created a ‘Lunch@ Lound’ initiative where a staff member selects a resident to invite to lunch. They enjoy one-to-one time on a separate table, as friends would in a restaurant. This experience, which is greatly appreciated by the residents, reconnects food as a social experience and thus encourages residents to eat a full meal. Another home – Elliscombe House in Somerset – has a novel way to overcome the challenge of sensory loss. Meals are a part of the day that residents look forward to, but it is difficult to anticipate a meal if you do not know what is on the day’s menu. Elliscombe House has large buttons positioned on the walls which, if pressed, speak the menu for the day.
Raising awareness
Last month, food wholesaler Brakes, which supplies to many care homes, launched a campaign to help providers manage the challenges they are facing in providing nutritious meals for residents. The dual pressures of labour shortages and food price inflation are causing difficulties for care homes, and Brakes’ ‘We Care, Because You Do’ initiative aims to help them overcome these.
The campaign highlights the additional support and resources which are available to providers, managers, buyers, and catering teams. Research by Brakes carried out over the past year found there had been a 179 per cent increase in online searches for ‘care home food menu’ and a 100 per cent rise in ‘care home nutrition’ in the past three months, showing the need for new
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ideas and advice to ensure that residents continue to receive nutritious meals and snacks which keep them interested and willing to eat.
Although these initiatives are a practical
way to encourage eating, the issue of monitoring residents’ intake of food and fluid across an entire care environment, and over a period of time to identify any trends, is significantly more challenging. This is where care technology can assist.
The power of care technology Care technology has progressed significantly in recent years. From its beginnings as a way to digitise residents’ care plans, many Care Management Systems (CMS) now offer modules to manage other aspects of care home management such as staff rotas and finance. The latest generation of CMS have introduced a nutrition app, which is a gamechanger for care homes when it comes to monitoring the nutrition of its residents. One of the clearest benefits of such
technology to care providers is one of economics. Because the staff can sit with the residents and help them to select their meal choices, which are then input directly onto the system, a significant amount of time is saved. There is no longer a need to manually collect paper menus and then input the details for the kitchen, meaning the kitchen has more time to prepare meals as they receive the orders in real time. The orders are also person-centred, as the staff member has spent time sitting with the individual resident to discuss their
Although a reduced appetite alone is not a significant problem, long-term it can be a risk factor
choices with them and encourage them to make a selection thus creating a hospitality experience. Personal preferences can be adhered to at all times, even when care homes are using bank or agency staff who do not know the residents as well as the homes’ own staff. The residents’ care plans can be linked to the nutrition app, meaning that any selection which is against a ‘normal’ one will activate an in-built warning trigger (such as selecting a dish against their dietary needs/preferences, for example a vegetarian accidentally ordering a dish containing meat or the kitchen providing regular food to chew as opposed to a pureed meal). The obvious benefit of this is one of health and safety, as escalation of a known risks into a major incident, such as an allergic reaction or choking, can be avoided. Having a nutrition app integrated into a CMS enables a kitchen team to create digital menus including, but not limited to, seasonal menus, and to detail ingredients, allergens, and calorific content. Building on the previously mentioned ‘restaurant hospitality experience’, such an app can create a pictorial menu from which residents can select their preferred dishes, giving them choice, and enabling easy recognition if their sight is failing. Any changes in a resident’s nutritional requirements will be visible to the kitchen team in real time as soon as changes are made to the care plan (for example, if a resident’s swallow risk changes), so that alterations to the type of and/or consistency of their meals can be made immediately. However, even CMS which do not feature a nutrition app can be useful in monitoring a residents’ nutrition. The vast majority of them have digitised care planning, which can record a residents’ personal details including their weight. If a resident appears to be losing weight, their current weight can be checked against that which was recorded
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com January 2024
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