If it's not good enough for our children, why would it be good enough for elderly?
Thanks to Jamie Oliver and his recent television series, we have seen so much in the media about “school dinners” but there has been little focus on food in healthcare settings such as hospitals and care homes. As a leading care provider we believe that the same focus should be paid elderly and vulnerable people in residential care settings.
It is clear that as we become older our nutritional needs not only change to support the aging process but that we need high vitamin and nutritional content to ensure that maintain as high a level of personal well-being as each individuals personal health circumstances permit.
With a desire to be innovators in catering services, Caring Homes have “Put their money – where their mouth is” and developed a structured approach towards catering provision. Falling within the remit of our Hotel Services Department, we have developed a number of initiatives to ensure that we are set to deliver high quality food and beverages to our residents.
Our hotel services department have been working closely with our chef managers on effective budgeting and menu planning to ensure that core menus area developed to incorporate attractively presented meals with balanced nutritional and high vitamin content designed to ensuring the aging process is supported through food and nutrition.
Our recruitment process for chef managers now requires minimum qualifications to 706/1 and 706/2 in hotel & catering with basic food hygiene, working towards intermediate. On-going training and development programmes ensure that skills are developed. The training and development programmes include “Chef Development Days” which are aimed at evaluating new chefs within the first 3 months probation period and assessing the skills of present chefs / cooks within the company. Within this development programme our chefs are also put under pressure with “Ready Steady Cook” scenarios in which they are given set ingredients from which they compile both 2 and 3 course meals, within a set time.
This has led to innovative menu planning incorporating traditional English cuisine, healthy competition amongst our chef managers and ideas sharing all of which have a benefit to our clients.
Profile for Clive Haddock - Head-Chef at Denham Manor
Clive’s first full-time position was at the Sheraton Skyline Hotel (Heathrow). After a brief period Clive was promoted to Chef de Partie and after a short spell at Fredericks Rest Hotel in Maidenhead Clive was asked back to fulfil the position of Senior Sous-Chef. His first Head Chef position was at Anugraha, a 120 bedroom conference centre in Windsor Great Park then Head Chef at a hotel based in Harrow called the Harrow hotel. |
Once leaving the hotel sector Clive applied for Head Chef Positions in the contract catering sector; working for Lotus development in Staines and a recording studio in Primrose Hill, London.
After a few years he opened a new catering concept in High Wycombe (Café Fresco) for Safeway stores and from there went to work for 4 years at Linden Hill private clinic which involved a great deal of special dietary needs and menu planning.
In his experience, catering in Care homes has often been neglected and so it was of great interest and inspiration to him that Caring Homes were looking to put the focus on food at the top of their agenda.
They have given me great support to develop new menus, increase food budgets to a much higher level than most care homes as well as providing the management infrastructure to support the changes and developments to meet society’s expectation of care homes today.