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These positive stories are examples of best practice that we’ve found through our monitoring activities. Some have been shared with us by service managers and clinical care staff. Others have been collated from active food focus groups.
Culturally specific food and dining story
One service providing culturally specific care and services for Chinese Australian residents, started a food focus group to get their residents’ feedback.
Residents and their representatives gave feedback in the food focus group asking that the provider serve Chinese meals every day. They also asked to celebrate traditional festival days. Through the food focus group, the service involved residents in developing the menus. The chef and catering team worked with the food focus group members to find out what traditional festival days were important to them and what traditional foods they should add to the menu.
Now they celebrate traditional festival days like Chinese New Year, the Moon Festival, Christmas and the Dragon Boat Festival. Foods include traditional and favourite foods from various parts of China and include:
- yum cha specialties
- steamed rice dumplings
- dim sims
- spring rolls
- moon cakes
- char siu
- beef tendons
- BBQ pork
- Peking duck
- pork buns.
Food focus group meeting minutes showed residents and their representatives 'love' the food year-round. Especially, the opportunity to celebrate the important festival days with traditional food. The chef and catering staff reported higher job satisfaction, knowing that the effort they put in to design the menu with residents had a positive impact. They look forward to working with residents in the food focus group to keep improving the menu and food service.
Family favourite recipes story
One service has made recipe changes through feedback from their food focus group.
They invite family members to the group meeting and encourage ‘family favourite’ recipes. During the meeting, they discuss their favourite meals while enjoying the special snacks prepared by the chef. The dietitian supporting the service goes to the meetings to work alongside family members in recipe or menu changes.
The chef and dietitian take the provided recipes and review their menu. The group has agreed that once a month they will have a ‘family night’ where familiar dishes are included.
Recreate memorable moments story
One service asked their food focus group. to think about their favourite dining experiences and share what made them special. Many residents mentioned eating with their partners and family members for special occasions like ‘date night’.
With this feedback, the service trialled a ‘couple or family dinner’ where the lifestyle coordinator supported residents to make an invitation and send it to their partner or family member for a special dinner in the private dining room. The chef prepared the resident’s favourite meal, and the resident and their partner or family member could dress up and enjoy a special candlelit dinner.
The food focus group minutes showed many compliments and positive feedback. One resident said that the couples dinner had been her highlight of living at the service and something she looked forward to.
Survey responses
In 2021–2022, we worked with the Older Persons Advocacy Network (OPAN). We surveyed 365 older people living in residential aged care across Australia about their food and dining experience. The Analysis of food and dining experiences in residential aged care services report explains the key findings of the survey results. It gives a view into what residents think about the food and dining at their aged care home.
Below are some of the responses where residents talked about how they appreciated being able to give input.
- I used to be on the food committee so I understand the chefs can’t please everybody. I sympathize with the cooks. We would meet monthly and had a cook come and listened to what the residents were saying.
- The meals are good here, they know what I like, I like mince and vegetables. I like everything but the curry which is spicy. The presentation of meals is excellent and it looks and tastes good. There are forms that you can fill in with things you want them to know, things you like or don’t like.
- Between our voices, which we sometimes have to put on megaphone, things have improved with our food.
- Variety is really good – the Chef asks how things are, and there are forms to fill out (feedback).
- Staff ask residents if they like meals to get feedback and they act on it… Food committee even comes to room and gets feedback and acts on it.
- Feedback is taken on board. We complained about the soup, and they changed it and last night it was really good.
- There is a monthly meeting with the director of care and a feedback box is available.
- We have a pretty good choice. We can ask for things at the residents’ meeting. For example, I brought up that we hadn’t had bacon in the morning for a while and they started serving bacon again.
- I enjoy the food we eat here. We can always talk to the staff if we have any issues, and they listen to us. I am never worried about speaking up.
