Personal care homes can be a blessing for elderly people and
others who can’t quite
take care of themselves.
But they can be a challenge
for the people who prepare the
meals. Most personal care homes in Georgia are small,
with 15 or fewer people. It’s like
cooking for a big family of people with widely varied
dietary needs.
"Nutritious meals and snacks are an important
part of maintaining good health and
managing chronic diseases," said Elizabeth
Andress. "Food is a source of personal
pleasure, too. And meals and snacks offer
times for socialization."
Andress is an Extension Service food, nutrition and
health scientist with the University of Georgia College
of Family and Consumer Sciences. She led a team of
extension authors in writing the
"Food Service Manual for Use in Personal Care
Homes," a nutrition and
meal-planning guide just being released.
"We wrote the manual to be a quick, useful
handbook for those who plan, prepare
and serve food in small personal care homes,"
Andress said. It focuses both on good
nutrition and on food safety.
The manual came out of a project of UGA Extension
agents in Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton counties. The agents
had all trained metro Atlanta
personal care home providers for many years.
In 1996, the agents received the Kraft Media Grant
from the National Extension
Association of Family and Consumer Sciences to fund the
project.
Andress and the agent team wrote the manual. UGA
foods and nutrition faculty reviewed
it. So did professionals in the Long Term Care
Ombudsman Program of Georgia, the Atlanta Regional
Commission and the Georgia
Department of Human Resources.
Finally, a number of personal care homes in the three
Atlanta counties used a draft of
the manual for four to five weeks. A focus group from
those providers gave feedback for
last-minute improvements.
At $10, the manual comes as a three-hole-punched
loose-leaf notebook without a binder.
It has chapters on nutrition and meal planning. It gives
tips for feeding people with a
range of special problems. It tells how to save money
buying foods, and how to buy,
prepare and store foods safely.
The guide tells how to prepare for long power
failures. It even includes a section of
weights, measures, substitutions and other helps for
using or changing recipes.
To order the manual, contact your county Extension
Service office. Or call (706)
542-8999.
