Category Archives: disability
‘Meal Mates’ feeding scheme helps patients get their meals
KING’S LYNN: Getting matey at mealtimes
Meal Mates feeding scheme at Tilney Ward in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Helen Wise the meal time co-ordinator with patient Jean Hill.
Volunteers at Lynn’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital have been swapping their desks for dinner trays to help create a mealtime community on the wards and encourage patients to enjoy their food.
The Meal Mates scheme was introduced in August 2011, prompted by staff concerns at the national reports suggesting that patients in some UK hospitals were going without food and drink because nursing staff were too busy to look after them.
Although no allegations had been made against ward staff at the QEH, staff were concerned that on some wards, those with older patients including some with dementia, that nurses were unable to give patients the time and support needed during mealtimes.
Family unpaid carers have to fight for everything
Truth and lies about poverty, benefits and welfare
Abstract
A new churches’ report (published by by the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church, through their Joint Public Issues Team) shows how evidence and statistics have been misused, misrepresented and manipulated to create untruths that stigmatise poor people, welfare recipients and those in receipt of benefits. Ekklesia has not been involved in the commissioning or production of this report, but as a thinktank working on welfare issues and advocating a major shift of public policy towards the needs, concerns and skills of marginalised people in society, we are pleased to endorse and publicise it.