One of the UK’s largest trade unions, Unison, has launched an online petition calling for support to ensure fresh meals continue to be prepared and served at St Mary’s Hospital and restaurant.
The union says the hospital are considering replacing fresh food with frozen ready meals and closing the public restaurant.
Financial crisis leads to tough decisions
As reported back in April by OnTheWight, the IW NHS Trust and CCG are both having to take emergency measure due to financial crisis and a draft paper for NHS England reveals tough decisions may have to be made.
The petition
Having already attracted hundreds of signatures on paper, the online petition reads,
St Mary’s has a full kitchen preparing and serving healthy food throughout the hospital. Their fresh food is delivered to patients on the wards, and supplies the popular Full Circle restaurant, used by both visitors and staff.
The Isle of Wight NHS Trust is currently considering whether to replace freshly prepared food for patients with frozen ready meals, and at the same time, closing Full Circle.
Hundreds of people have already signed our paper petition and patients, visitors and staff have been telling UNISON representatives how much they value the restaurant and the fresh food the kitchen provides.
If you want to keep fresh food prepared on site for patients, visitors and staff, let the Trust know what you think- sign our petition below!
If you’d like to sign the petition head over to the Unison Website. At time of publishing the online petition had 179 signatures.
NHS response to petition
A spokesperson from Isle of Wight NHS Trust responded,
The catering facilities – kitchen and dining room and the catering equipment – at St. Mary’s Hospital are 25 years old and in need of investment.
Hospital food services are reviewed each year in the PLACE (Patient-led Assessments of the Care Environment) Assessment. The PLACE Assessment looks at our food and drink strategy, food procurement and catering practices, compliance with the 10 Key Characteristics of Good Nutritional Care as well as menu, choice and meal timings, portion size, menu cycle, dietician involvement, easy opening packages. The assessment for the St. Mary’s site was undertaken by a mixed group of staff and patients in line with national guidance.
Our catering staff work very hard to provide a good service and despite a rating of over 80% for food quality in the 2015 PLACE Assessment, when compared with 288 other Trusts who participated in the assessment, overall we came in the lowest 6% of all NHS sites for food services. The need for investment in this area is clear but the Trust has limited access to capital funding which has to be used for investments, both medical and non-medical.
The Trust has asked Wight Life Partnership to undertake an options appraisal which is looking at the following options:
- Investment in the In-house Catering Service
- Full outsourcing of all Catering Services
- Outsourcing of commercial catering
- Outsourcing of patient food services
The options appraisal will consider a range of food production techniques including cook fresh, cook chill and cook freeze. Although the Trust is reviewing the service we are committed to:
- Retaining a kitchen facility at St. Mary’s
- Retaining a restaurant facility for staff and visitors.
No decisions have been made. The options appraisal will be completed by Christmas when the Trust Board will take a decision about how to proceed. Staff have been kept fully informed in writing and via meetings with them and their representatives but it is understandable that they are concerned about what the future holds.
We welcome constructive comment which along with the options appraisal will help inform a decision about how the much needed improvements can be made for patients, visitors and staff.
Image: robertpaulyoung under CC BY 2.0
