It is widely recognised that social care home catering teams are faced with four major stresses – time, budget constraints, complexity of diets, and the shortage of skilled labour.
With regards to meal preparation and services, there is simply not enough time and what little there is, is spent meeting three very tight mealtime deadlines every day. Residents punctuate their whole day by mealtimes, so the stress to deliver these on time can be overwhelming.
With the continuous rise of choice, the demand for quality has increased too. This invariably affects the budget as everyone wants fresh produce which costs more to source. Then there’s the complexity of special diets, of which there are many, and the shortage of skilled labour that has been squeezed further by the increase in wage costs.
Ultimately, if we really want to stop social care homes reaching for the cheapest frozen ready meals, they need to integrate industry-specific technology into catering and utilise digital solutions to reduce stress triggers, create efficiencies, and ensure residents are happy and healthy.
Food is such an integral aspect of a person’s life, after all; it embodies their identity and culture. For those tasked with providing nourishment in care homes, mealtimes bear a significant level of responsibility.
With many diverse clinical dietary requirements, allergies, dislikes, preferences, and cultural necessities, manually tracking residents’ records has become a challenge. Moreover, the traditional manual approach has become outdated and is notoriously time-consuming, and by the time the data has been physically updated across the care home, the information could already be obsolete.
Inevitably, this creates a major level of responsibility for catering teams in social care to meet the vast array of dietetic necessities. Additionally, there is mounting pressure for staff to devote more time directly with residents as opposed to spending an extraordinary amount of time completing paperwork.
Unsurprisingly, then, the daily task of manually managing food records has become quite a challenge for social care home catering teams. With that said, we acknowledge that stress has rapidly become one of the great public health challenges of our time, yet it still isn’t held in the same esteem as physical health concerns, despite being a key driver in exacerbating mental health problems such as anxiety and depression.
In fact, the Mental Health Foundation reports that 74 per cent of UK adults felt so stressed at some point during the previous 12 months that they became overwhelmed or unable to cope. Furthermore, similar research by the Stress Management Society discovered that 65 percent of people in the UK have seen an enhancement in their stress levels because of COVID-19.
Put simply, this is a health crisis that cannot be ignored. The impact coronavirus has had on the social and healthcare sectors is astronomical. Moreover, for those tasked to bear the responsibility of cultivating the well-being of others, stress is an aspect of life that commonly can be overlooked.
Technology, then, can be used to offer a solution in terms of time-saving, minimised errors and to amplify better consumer-directed care. As a provider of care catering software to care homes, we have set our sights on creating an environment where care staff are no longer required to spend time repetitively completing residents’ dietary records.
Our cloud-based software ensures residents’ preferences are steadily updated and readily available to the catering team, eliminating the burden of using traditional clinical systems and paper as a means for documentation.
The real-time collection and distribution of information, therefore, ensures new dietary requirements and preferences find their way to the kitchen promptly. This ultimately allows catering staff to focus solely on optimising the quality of food, which in turn, enhances the residents’ experience.
We are extremely fortunate to live in an age where technological advancements are constantly empowering people to live better, healthier lives. As a result, we know first-hand the administrative burden that is placed on catering teams in aged social care homes. Ultimately, by utilising technology, we can reduce the emotional toll and mental strain on catering staff, and stress can be minimised to as little as possible.
To put it into context, our software offers six different textures of food, five different fluid textures, 100 different allergies, intolerances and dislikes, and can cater for at least five different cultures every meal service. With residents eating six times a day, 365 days a year, having to manually record and maintain that volume of data is unsustainable. Moreover, it places unrealistic expectations for catering staff to both plan, track and execute residents’ daily dietary needs.
In addition, a recent study into dementia found people living with the condition and their carers could also benefit from technology when it is customised to meet their unique needs and goals. Off-the-shelf technology like apps, and augmented reality headsets are not appropriate for people living with dementia, and can cause unnecessary stress triggers. In search of a solution, a study in Australia saw 30 individuals living with dementia or mild cognitive impairment questioned about their everyday frustrations and ideas they had for improving their quality of life. All participants were then given personalised technology to help address their challenges or to help them achieve their goals. The result yielded a high success rate of healthier, happier residents.
Overall, it is clear to see that the nimble capabilities of technology are empowering significant areas of care homes, which inevitably creates a better working environment for staff to continue making an exponential difference to countless lives. We look forward to seeing the changes that are only going to help us in the fight to reduce psychological strains such as stress in the workplace.
About the author
Belinda Adams is the CEO and founder of SoupedUp, a leading care catering software provider created to make world-class care catering a reality. With many different clinical dietary requirements, allergies, dislikes, preferences, and cultural needs, managing this manually daily has become a challenge. SoupedUp’s software tackles this challenge head-on by empowering care home providers to create a better experience for their residents.