Good morning,
I am posting in the hopes of receiving advice to do with meal times at the care home my 66 year old mother is a resident in currently. I am a 32 year old whose mother has has suffered numerous strokes over the last 10 years and is now left without real use of her arms and legs and who also cannot speak without great effort though she is still alert, responsive, fully aware of her surroundings and able to hear fine still with a great grasp of English, Gujrati, Punjabi, Hindi and other languages. She also has early stage dementia but has always been a social person and loves spending time with others, even though she cannot speak herself, listening to general chit chat and is a keen people watcher now.
She has been in care homes around 4 years and I used to go to see her every day of the weekend but had to increase that to as many meal times as possible (around 5 or 6 a week) so I could feed her due to issues with the current care home manager putting her on a liquid diet, with no variation in that meal, against the families wishes and the actual SALT team assessment which I've just had to have clarified and corrected to them. I and other residents families are now having difficulty with the care home she has been in for the last year as they have informed us they are introducing a rule that prevents family members feeding their resident relative in the main dining area and instead have advised we need to take the relative to their bedroom to feed them there.
The care home have advised this is due to several reasons these being:
1. Staff are distracted by additional noise and relatives making requests in regards to the meals being served to their relatives/friends
2. Space in the dining room is limited due to the care home having now having the maximum number of residents possible
3. Certain residents families have expressed the desire for their relative to not be observed dining by others
No formal letter of this rule change has been dispatched yet but senior nurses and the manager have already began enforcing the rule, advising relatives who are trying to feed residents they can't be in the dining room and becoming quite rude with those not complying.
It's extremely clear this rule change has come from the senior nurses and managers desire to avoid people seeing how long it takes their staff to get something a residents requires e.g. food, water, etc and to prevent family seeing what actually goes on at meal times e.g. how much people eat or what they do if a resident objects to what's served, as the actually careers are lovely , appreciating the help family give and have been ignoring the rule whenever possible or very obviously reluctantly asking family members to leave when senior nurses force them to. The residents themselves are friends with all the family members who regularly come to feed their relatives, having a great relationship where they usually converse briefly, catching up and checking how each other are, offering residents a nice extra social aspect they cannot get from carers as they are too busy through out the day.
The following reasons have been raised with them why this is not right for residents or their family as per the Dignity in Care meal times guide lines:
1. Certain residents family members need to feed them as they cannot communicate themselves properly what they desire and the care home just make the basic effort at meal times in order to get everyone put to bed by 7pm
2. Family are not provided with a proper table and chairs in the bedrooms.
3. Being sat at different heights prevents family seeing if the resident is eating food properly.
4. It prevents family encouraging residents to feed themselves as with current table and chairs it is not possible for them to reach food.
5. Prevents residents from socialising with the other residents.
6. Family members who are friends with other residents and their family are unable to look out for their well being.
7. If staff find it difficult to do their job with noisy family members than they should speak directly to those causing noise and politely explain why they should be more quiet.
8. If family members are concerned about their resident family member being watched at meals than their family member should be fed separately instead of the resident who has no issue with being seen eating in front of others and who wishes to socialise.
9. Obtaining food, drink, tissues is more difficult as it is not in the main dining area.
10. Residents miss out on food options that are being given to others in the dining room.
11. Staff unfortunately, as family members have discovered multiple times, lie about what residents have eaten and how much so cannot be trusted to look after residents at meal times without some checks by family.
12. There are 4/5 staff trying to manage lunch/dinner for 40 with 2 or 3 starting to put residents to bed for naps / the night within half an hour of meal time leaving only 2 serving food who then also start taking residents to bed frequently leaving no staff in the dining area.
13. As the senior nurse is dispensing medication during meal times and residents are left completely unattended frequently, family members in the same room can alert staff to issues such as residents dropping their tablets or spitting them out which has happened on 5 occasions I've been there.
14. As residents are left without any staff monitoring them those with dementia or issues moving are more likely to get in to unwanted situations, e.g. falling over, dropping cutlery, eating other residents food or tissues, without family members who normally could be there, no longer around to alert staff, which has began to occur.
15. There is more than enough space in the dining room with there being around 13 big 4 seater tables that are never all full and can easily fit at least 1 more person on them besides this (which I did fine before), who can sit on the sides next to the walls to prevent getting in the way of serving staff even though there are only 4-5 families anyway who regularly need to come to feed their relatives and the home already had a policy of only have one person being present during a relatives meal time.
16. When families were choosing a home for the residents the dining rooms were part of the service offered and this is now being denied.
17. From what I've observed the requests family make have been perfectly acceptable and they have never caused additional noise with the main noise coming from staff arguing with difficult residents.
These reasons however have all been dismissed by the care home and residents family members who are disputing the rule have been told to now look at moving residents to other care homes or to speak to the owner of the care home which I will be doing today. The fact that this is ignoring what's best for residents and forcing those with dementia to move, with the true reason it's being done, which is less hassle for staff by allowing them to neglect residents needs, is not being accepted by the care home and I wanted to see if you were aware of any rules or regulations that prevent them doing this please?
Thank you for reading this,
Ash
I am posting in the hopes of receiving advice to do with meal times at the care home my 66 year old mother is a resident in currently. I am a 32 year old whose mother has has suffered numerous strokes over the last 10 years and is now left without real use of her arms and legs and who also cannot speak without great effort though she is still alert, responsive, fully aware of her surroundings and able to hear fine still with a great grasp of English, Gujrati, Punjabi, Hindi and other languages. She also has early stage dementia but has always been a social person and loves spending time with others, even though she cannot speak herself, listening to general chit chat and is a keen people watcher now.
She has been in care homes around 4 years and I used to go to see her every day of the weekend but had to increase that to as many meal times as possible (around 5 or 6 a week) so I could feed her due to issues with the current care home manager putting her on a liquid diet, with no variation in that meal, against the families wishes and the actual SALT team assessment which I've just had to have clarified and corrected to them. I and other residents families are now having difficulty with the care home she has been in for the last year as they have informed us they are introducing a rule that prevents family members feeding their resident relative in the main dining area and instead have advised we need to take the relative to their bedroom to feed them there.
The care home have advised this is due to several reasons these being:
1. Staff are distracted by additional noise and relatives making requests in regards to the meals being served to their relatives/friends
2. Space in the dining room is limited due to the care home having now having the maximum number of residents possible
3. Certain residents families have expressed the desire for their relative to not be observed dining by others
No formal letter of this rule change has been dispatched yet but senior nurses and the manager have already began enforcing the rule, advising relatives who are trying to feed residents they can't be in the dining room and becoming quite rude with those not complying.
It's extremely clear this rule change has come from the senior nurses and managers desire to avoid people seeing how long it takes their staff to get something a residents requires e.g. food, water, etc and to prevent family seeing what actually goes on at meal times e.g. how much people eat or what they do if a resident objects to what's served, as the actually careers are lovely , appreciating the help family give and have been ignoring the rule whenever possible or very obviously reluctantly asking family members to leave when senior nurses force them to. The residents themselves are friends with all the family members who regularly come to feed their relatives, having a great relationship where they usually converse briefly, catching up and checking how each other are, offering residents a nice extra social aspect they cannot get from carers as they are too busy through out the day.
The following reasons have been raised with them why this is not right for residents or their family as per the Dignity in Care meal times guide lines:
1. Certain residents family members need to feed them as they cannot communicate themselves properly what they desire and the care home just make the basic effort at meal times in order to get everyone put to bed by 7pm
2. Family are not provided with a proper table and chairs in the bedrooms.
3. Being sat at different heights prevents family seeing if the resident is eating food properly.
4. It prevents family encouraging residents to feed themselves as with current table and chairs it is not possible for them to reach food.
5. Prevents residents from socialising with the other residents.
6. Family members who are friends with other residents and their family are unable to look out for their well being.
7. If staff find it difficult to do their job with noisy family members than they should speak directly to those causing noise and politely explain why they should be more quiet.
8. If family members are concerned about their resident family member being watched at meals than their family member should be fed separately instead of the resident who has no issue with being seen eating in front of others and who wishes to socialise.
9. Obtaining food, drink, tissues is more difficult as it is not in the main dining area.
10. Residents miss out on food options that are being given to others in the dining room.
11. Staff unfortunately, as family members have discovered multiple times, lie about what residents have eaten and how much so cannot be trusted to look after residents at meal times without some checks by family.
12. There are 4/5 staff trying to manage lunch/dinner for 40 with 2 or 3 starting to put residents to bed for naps / the night within half an hour of meal time leaving only 2 serving food who then also start taking residents to bed frequently leaving no staff in the dining area.
13. As the senior nurse is dispensing medication during meal times and residents are left completely unattended frequently, family members in the same room can alert staff to issues such as residents dropping their tablets or spitting them out which has happened on 5 occasions I've been there.
14. As residents are left without any staff monitoring them those with dementia or issues moving are more likely to get in to unwanted situations, e.g. falling over, dropping cutlery, eating other residents food or tissues, without family members who normally could be there, no longer around to alert staff, which has began to occur.
15. There is more than enough space in the dining room with there being around 13 big 4 seater tables that are never all full and can easily fit at least 1 more person on them besides this (which I did fine before), who can sit on the sides next to the walls to prevent getting in the way of serving staff even though there are only 4-5 families anyway who regularly need to come to feed their relatives and the home already had a policy of only have one person being present during a relatives meal time.
16. When families were choosing a home for the residents the dining rooms were part of the service offered and this is now being denied.
17. From what I've observed the requests family make have been perfectly acceptable and they have never caused additional noise with the main noise coming from staff arguing with difficult residents.
These reasons however have all been dismissed by the care home and residents family members who are disputing the rule have been told to now look at moving residents to other care homes or to speak to the owner of the care home which I will be doing today. The fact that this is ignoring what's best for residents and forcing those with dementia to move, with the true reason it's being done, which is less hassle for staff by allowing them to neglect residents needs, is not being accepted by the care home and I wanted to see if you were aware of any rules or regulations that prevent them doing this please?
Thank you for reading this,
Ash