Strong Voices

The residents of Birkdale Road have become enthusiastic participants in meal planning and preparation since receiving the IHC Cookbook.

Copies of the IHC Cookbook went out to residential services late last year. It was put together by the IDEA Services Clinical Team along with dietician Abbie Fuller, and the recipes can be easily adapted for the different dietary needs of the people we support.

“We had been redoing the safer eating and drinking programme and decided to develop a cookbook with meals that could be changed to fit the international modified diet categories,” says Director of Nursing Prue Lennox. “We wanted it to be an educational resource for staff.”

High-risk foods have been taken out of the cookbook and those that remain have specific instructions to ensure the preparation minimises risks. For example, meat that can be a choking risk is cooked in a way that makes it easy for people to chew.

The cookbook also gives basic guidance to support workers, some of whom haven’t had much cooking experience.

The meals are easy to make and detailed pictures offer chances to include the people we support in meal planning and preparation.

For the residents of Birkdale Road, having the IHC Cookbook open on the bench has allowed a much more collective approach to meal planning and cooking.

“In the past it’s been difficult to know what everyone wanted, but now they can see the pictures and choose what they want to cook,” says support worker Marzanne Vorster. “We all sit down with the cookbook to plan the menu.”

Once the meals for the week have been chosen, resident Melissa goes with Marzanne to do the grocery shop for the week and everyone helps to prepare the meals.

Everyone has been finding there’s much more variation in their diets too. “We used to get quite stuck, making the same things all the time because it was easy,” says Marzanne. “Now we’ve cooked quite a few meals in this cookbook. It’s been wonderful.”

The residents have enjoyed experimenting with a lot of foods and flavours. Of course some dishes are more popular than others.

“We’ve learnt couscous is not a favourite – but there’s a Moroccan lamb dish with flavours people hadn’t tasted before and that went down really well.”

Birkdale Road resident Kataraina says macaroni cheese is always her first choice when meal planning. The recipe in the book includes cauliflower, which she loves. And Kataraina takes a front and centre role in the preparation by grating the cheese.

“I think it’s empowering,” says Marzanne. “We remind Kataraina during dinner – ‘you chose this recipe’.”

Prue says that, overall, the feedback from support workers has been positive.

“It’s a real change of focus, with the people we support participating more, so cooking is fun rather than a chore that has to be done every night.”

The cookbook has also brought a new attention to food and diet while still keeping the shopping within the weekly budgets of the houses.

“We were trying to decrease the amount of processed and pre-packaged food in services to make sure people were getting a good balance of food groups, and these recipes are helping,” says Prue.

“And nothing in the cookbook is super expensive. It hasn’t increased the cost of food, it’s changed what people do with the food, how they cook it.”

There has been a lot of interest in the book from the community outside IDEA Services, so there is some potential for another print run. But for now Birkdale Road and other residential houses are finding new enjoyment in cooking and meal times.

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Caption 1: Melissa preparing the vegetables.

Caption 2: Kataraina creating a nourishing evening meal.

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