From Market to Meal: Supporting Nutrition at Osman House

At Osman House, our residential care home in Leeds, the people we support have been getting involved with a great new initiative.

It’s all about encouraging a healthy diet by working together.

The team at Osman House provides specialist neurobehavioural support, for people with acquired brain injuries and complex neurological needs. Our colleagues are always looking for creative, collaborative ways to support people’s rehabilitation and wellbeing. Since it began in the autumn, ‘From Market to Meal’ has been a huge success.

Eloise Hartley, Occupational Therapy Assistant, told us about it.

Creating dishes together for healthy eating

“We love encouraging a healthy and achievable diet for the people we support. What better way of doing this than letting them take the lead themselves and create their own dishes together?

“Activities around food are very popular at Osman House. For example, our Soup and Smoothie making groups are a firm favourite with everyone!

“We wanted to come up with something to help promote healthy eating and independence. The ‘From Market to Meal’ idea came from my colleague, Julie Haigh, an Occupational Therapy Apprentice. I suggested visiting a greengrocer so people could look at the vegetables and decide if they looked fresh or not – without relying on ‘use by’ or ‘best before’ dates on the packets.

Planning and taking part

“Our idea was met with enthusiasm by many of the people we support, so we decided to start planning our trip together. The challenge was embraced by everyone. They quickly looked around at various vegetables and discussed them with one another, working together to make sure they didn’t all purchase the same item! It turned out to be a great time, with a cuppa afterwards in the local supermarket cafe.

“Once back at Osman House, they sat together and produced a super healthy and very tasty soup.

“We now also run two ‘sandwich/wrap/toastie/jacket potato’ making groups each week, to encourage people to make their own healthy meals together. They have created some great ideas for interesting sandwich and toastie fillings.”

Sharing ideas

The initiative was also on the agenda at our most recent Golden Whisk Best Practice Forum meeting. The group meets every three months, and our Personalisation and Co-Production Lead, Wendy Baylis-Wareing, told us about it:

“The Golden Whisk Forum is a shared space where our chefs, therapists and people we support come together, to drive improvement in healthy eating and dining experiences – through joint decision making, and sharing great initiatives such as ‘From Market to Meal’.”

We’re looking forward to hearing about the different food challenges the group at Osman House come up with next!

To learn more about how we ensure that the people we support can thrive, whatever that means to each individual, or to refer someone to one of our services, click here.