Enter and view: The Sunridge Court Care Home

On the 15 February 2018, Healthwatch Barnet carried out an announced Enter and View visit at The Sunridge Court Care Home as part of a planned programme of work to review the mealtime experiences of residents at a range of care and nursing homes across the London Borough of Barnet.

The Sunridge Court Care Home is a 43 bed home, run by a non profit making charity providing residential care for non orthodox Jewish elders. The residents are mostly mobile, but with some care needs. The home takes in residents with no dementia diagnosis at the time of admittance, but will continue to support residents who develop dementia until they need nursing care.

The Home uses outside caterers who employ the chef and catering staff and deliver fresh food every day. The catering staff’s hours extend from 7.00am to 8.00pm. The food is cooked from scratch in the kitchen adjacent to the dining room, and lunch is served by three domestic staff. The kitchen had a recent visit from the Environmental Health Team, and was awarded the top rating for hygiene. The food provided at the Home is kosher but non supervised.

Residents said that on the whole the food was good, and their choices were catered for as far as possible. They accepted that it was difficult to please everybody, but felt that sometimes it was not clear what constituted a dish from the title on the menu, especially if it had an unfamiliar name.

They thought the staff were “marvellous”, but that the serving staff could be rushed. Residents complained that the food was often cold or tepid by the time it was served to them., especially if they had chosen to eat in their rooms. Some residents said they had problems accessing the hot water machines in the dining room to make themselves a drink.

Healthwatch Barnet made 5 recommendations including a suggestion that the Home look at ways to keep meals warm while it was being served. There was also a recommendation made to discuss a possible change in the time the main meal was served so as to reduce the pressure on staff who were often rushing to have lunch finished by their shift change.

The response from Sunridge Court was positive, they felt the recommendations were good ideas and have undertaken to explore the possibility of implementing each one.