Aged Care

Consultancy

Nutrition Australia Victorian Division provides a number of consultancy services for aged care organisations; these include nutrition presentations, cooking demonstrations and menu assessments.

Menu assessments

Achieving a healthy and well balanced diet is important for all individuals, no matter what age they may be. Aged care facilities therefore need to ensure that all meals provided meet the nutritional requirements of their residents.

Nutrition Australia can assess your facility menu for variety and nutritional adequacy, in accordance with the core food groups and the Commonwealth standards for aged care facilities. An Accredited Practicing Dietitian will conduct the assessment and provide a detailed, comprehensive report with recommendations. The report includes:

A 4 week menu analysis
Assessment outcome details
Suggestions to improve the healthiness of the menu
Recommended cookbooks and resources
Details of specific nutritional issues that need to be addressed

Seniors Week Festival

Nutrition Australia also has two presentations specifically targeted at older adults. Perfect for Seniors Week Festivals!

Presentation topics include:

Healthy Eating Heathy Ageing
Healthy Ageing & Bone Health

Ageing with Dignity

Nutrition Australia Victorian Division has received funding from the Helen McPherson Smith Trust to deliver the ‘Ageing with Dignity Program’. The goal of the program is to assist with improving the health of residents of Victorian Supported Residential Services (SRSs) by encouraging healthy ageing and improving the management of chronic health conditions.

In order to achieve this goal, Nutrition Australia will be assisting SRSs to provide healthy and nutritious meals for residents. This will be achieved by:

Developing and distributing a resource manual (Healthy Food Guidelines) to all SRSs in Victoria. The manual will enable staff to evaluate their facility menu and make sustainable healthy changes to the food served.
Performing detailed menu assessments for 10 SRSs and providing reports outlining outcomes and recommendations
Providing ongoing support to SRSs via a 1300 helpline

Real Men Eat Quiche (RMEQ)

RMEQ is a six week cooking program, designed to give older males confidence in preparing a variety of healthy meals using a number of easy cooking techniques. The goal of the program is to improve the health, social networking and independence of older, disadvantaged and vulnerable widowed/single males who are at risk of social isolation, depression and poor health.

RMEQ provides participants with practice in cooking easy, quick, nourishing and cheap meals. With trained, peer-led facilitators, groups of 8 (divided into pairs) work together to prepare meals, and then enjoy eating the meal together. Throughout the course, participants receive nutrition and health education to further improve their health outcomes. Topic for discussion include food safety and hygiene, dietary guidelines for older adults, food labelling, recipe modification and how to use left overs.