Why is this course for me?

• Do you want to make a change in the look, sound and feel of your service, whether it is a care home, a day service or a hospital? 
• Is food and drink important to your own wellbeing?
• Do you feel that mealtimes can sometimes be a stressful and hectic time of the day?
• Do you struggle with how you can create a more relaxed feel?
• Would you like to create more of a sense of fun and variety at breakfast, lunch, dinner and during the snacks in between?

Sometimes the quickest way to assess the feel of a home or service is to visit at a mealtime.  Whether it is first thing in the morning at breakfast, during lunch time or the evening dinner, you will get an immediate sense of the relationships between people and whether or not it is a social and enjoyable event in the day.  If the “kitchen is the heart of the home” then, the meal service within any health and social care environment is a true test of how ‘home-like’ the service is.

Creating a positive mealtimes experience is everybody’s responsibility, and this course offers both a clear vision and practical steps for how you can make a meal or snack one of the best experiences in the day, not just a series of routine tasks to be got through as efficiently as possible. 

Whether you are a manager, a chef, a nutritionist, a recreation manager or a member of the nursing and care team, this is a course which will inspire you to take action! 

This is not a course focusing heavily on the clinical and nutritional aspects of food, but more on its social and psychological benefits, although of course these are intrinsically linked.

Whilst the content and examples in this course have a strong focus on older people and those living with dementia, there is much which will also be relevant to the support of people who have learning disabilities, functional decline, or people living with mental health needs. The course also focuses more on supporting people in care homes, hospitals or day services where people eat together, but a lot of the content is also relevant for supporting people living in their own homes.

The final element of this course offers you an opportunity to really focus on how well you are doing in relation to the mealtime experience where you work.   Having completed the other four modules, you will hopefully already have reflected on the things you are doing well, and the areas where improvement is needed.   However, there is no better way to take stock of what the reality is than doing a detailed observation of a ‘meal in action.’

Total time: 5 hours including time to give feedback and develop an action plan