How does social care support older adults’ food and drink-related needs/outcomes?
In the UK, there are an estimated 1.3 million older adults, aged over 65, who are undernourished. Older people receiving home care are particularly at risk for a variety of reasons, including social isolation, health issues, and accessibility of shops, transport and income. Community-based social care services, including home care, play a vital role in supporting older people to live independently and well. This includes supporting their needs related to food and drink. This encompasses whether someone is able to eat a balanced, nutritional diet, but is also able to enjoy the personal, social and cultural aspects of food and drink. However, there are challenges to ensuring older people’s needs are met. These include the short length of home care visits, underfunding and workforce issues.
Most research about older people’s food and drink-related needs focuses on residential care homes. Less is known about people living at home, who use home care or other community services, like lunch clubs or day centres. This project seeks to address this gap in the evidence. The idea for the study was developed together with user/carer advisors and the Applied Research Collaboration Kent, Surrey and Sussex (ARC KSS) Homecare Community of Experience.
This project has been funded by the NIHR School for Social Care Research (SSCR) from September 2022 to February 2024.
- We will scope the existing literature to identify what is already known about the food-related needs of older adults living at home using home care services. We will especially focus on the evidence relating to ways of delivering care or combining services. This scoping review will focus on published articles and reports available from searchable databases. However, we will also present and discuss the findings with an online group of service users/carers, care providers, local authorities and community organisations to identify other relevant literature.
- We will analyse data from a national survey of people using social care services in England, the Adult Social Care Survey (ASCS), to understand the extent of food and drink-related needs. This survey has collected information from people who use publicly- funded social care services, since 2011. We will explore the data over the last ten years to establish any trends over time, or between regions. The data will also be analysed to understand the factors that are related to higher risk of unmet needs. This will include, for example, housing design and suitability, ethnicity, local environment and underlying health needs.
- The findings from the literature review and data analysis will be considered to identify key messages for policy-makers, managers, care providers and commissioners. We will work with professionals and service user/carer advisors, to develop a brief guide to our findings and recommendations.
As each stage of the project is completed, we will update the publications and activities section.
Disclaimer: This study is independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research School for Social Care Research. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR SSCR, the National Institute for Health Research or the Department of Health and Social Care.