Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Over the last 40 years I’ve had the pleasure of assessing many, many residents’ swallowing. It’s always nice to be able to have chat about the resident’s life prior to entering an aged care facility, finding out about their families, their careers, what they like and dislike.

Sometimes they don’t want to hear from me that their diet needs to be modified. I completely understand that they can see it may herald yet another part of their life that’s shrinking, being taken away from them and being beyond their control.

Of course, intellectually many of them understand any food modification is for their safety, but on a feeling, emotional level they can feel they are losing something else in the enjoyment of their life. Enjoying and therefore co-operating with their modified meals relies very much on the skills of the facility’s catering staff.

The challenge then moves to the kitchen. When it comes to what they like and don’t like to eat and what’s safe for them to eat, the kitchen staff have the biggest challenge. James Ball and Preston Walker from Oak House Kitchen understand this on every level. Oak House Kitchen was established in 2018 to develop and provide catering innovation and training for the ageing, health and social care sectors.

With many years’ experience supporting a wide range of organisations, staff and patients in health and social care, Preston and James understood that there was a need for sector specific training and systems. Together at Oak House Kitchen they have developed core principles that can be easily understood and implemented across a wide range of catering services.

The Oak House Kitchen approach improves time efficiencies, quality, choice and safety, while instilling confidence in catering teams and mitigating risk to patients and the organisations providing care services.



Find out more. Click HERE