Network To Improve Meals In Homes For Older People

A network of nutrition champions tasked with improving meal times in Scotland’s care homes has been unveiled. Inspection body the Care Commission is to recruit 100 nurses nationwide to tackle poor appetite and nourishment among elderly residents. The staff will examine problems such as how to revive interest in food and how best to help people who struggle to feed themselves. They will be trained to introduce changes to care homes where they work, pilot new ideas on the ground and share lessons learned with other establishments.

Belinda Dewar, Scotland’s nurse consultant for older people in care homes, designed the project in one of her first moves since taking up the new position with the commission. Ms Dewar said: “There are issues for older people in care homes in terms of appetite. It can be a real problem.”

A study commissioned by the Scottish Executive, which reported in 2001, found one in five pensioners on hospital wards and in homes was undernourished. This year the House of Commons was told one in 10 care home residents loses up to 5% of their body weight within a month of being admitted and 10% of their body weight within six months.

In June a sheriff ruled a pensioner, so emaciated he looked like a “skeleton”, died after a series of failures at an under-staffed home in Scotland.

Professor Lawrence Whalley, an expert on nutrition and cognition at Aberdeen University, said a “complete absence” of trained staff was one of the key issues behind the problem. “If you do not keep someone relatively well nourished and hydrated they will get into a bed sore problem,” he added. “It causes it because a person’s tissue healing reduces.”

The Scottish Executive is investing £85,000 in the nutrition champions project, which is the first to be taken forward by a new learning network for care home staff. Details of successful nutrition initiatives will be posted on the learning network’s official NHS website so other homes can benefit.

Ms Dewar said there were already some examples of good practice. “One home has developed a brunch which ran from 8am through until midday, so you did not have to eat at a particular time,” she said.