A former chef is playing a key role in providing healthy and nutritional diets to residents at Orchard Care Homes’ portfolio of residences across the North of England and the Midlands
Jason Hunter, aged 35 from Leeds, started his career in the catering trade in 2002, working in hotels and restaurants for five years, including boutique hotel chain Malmaison in Leeds. He joined Orchard’s Paisley Lodge Care Home in Armley, Leeds in 2007 where he worked as a chef for 15 years, creating menus to suit individual resident’s needs.
After winning Orchard’s Chef of the Year title in 2018, Jason took on the role of Catering Lead on a six month secondment and proved he was very much up to the job. Supporting all the kitchens, Jason collaborated with individual chefs to create healthy menus for the residents ensuring they have the resident’s preferences and regional dishes that are a firm favourite. He has also supported chefs on the presentation of modified diets to be more appealing to the eye.
The COVID pandemic was a particularly challenging time, bringing with it many obstacles. With mental health a high priority, Jason addressed an alarming industry trend which saw some residents losing weight due to the anxieties and isolation of the lockdown. As a result of Jason’s work, weight loss across the portfolio has reduced by 4%.
Jason is involved in the Nutrition and Hydration Champion programme and provides support and advise to teams, enabling them to assist residents with poor appetites to enjoy the meal time experience. This has had a positive psychological impact for residents, as well as improvement in wound healing and pressure ulcer prevention.
He has developed menu resources for the teams and encouraged cake competitions seeing many residents get involved.
As part of his mentoring of kitchen staff to recognise the individual needs of residents, Jason works on a one-to-one basis with them to discover what foods they like, when they like to eat and other personal choices, developing individual menus to suit their needs. For example, he supported a resident struggling with poor appetite and by spending time with him discovered what he liked and enabled him to receive his favourite vegetables each day. He also arranged for extra support to be provided at meal times and helped develop a plan for this.
“Good nutrition is important, no matter what your age. It gives you energy and can help control weight. It may also help prevent some diseases, such as osteoporosis, high blood pressure, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers”, said Jason. “At Orchard we put great emphasis on providing all our residents with food that not only has the right amount of calories and nutritional value but appeals to their tastes. After all, meal times are often a highlight in terms of social activity.”