Welcome back to our ‘A Day in the Life’ series, where we chat to HILS team members to see what they get up to in a typical day and the impact their efforts have on clients across our services.
This month we are going to meet Stuart. Stuart is part of our Nutrition & Wellbeing team which covers the whole of Hertfordshire helping our meals on wheels clients stay as healthy as possible.
Stuarts role is broken down into two parts, a Nutrition & Wellbeing Visitor and also as part of the Nutrition Awareness Team (NAT) within the Hertfordshire Care Trust. Today we are going to hear about his role as a Nutrition & Wellbeing Visitor for HILS.
Read on to get a glimpse into a day in the life of Stuart….
Starting the day right
I start work at 9am but normally I spend from 8.45am making a cup of Assam tea. Whilst waiting for the tea to brew, I spend 5 minutes in the garden just to calmly prepare for the day. This peaceful start sets me up properly for the day ahead.
The working day begins
From 9am I sit at my desk at home and check my emails that may have accumulated over the weekend. I cover the Letchworth and Hertford areas, so my emails will mainly be from the teams there.
Once the emails have been checked, I look through my calendar to see the clients I have that day. I then look up any case notes and details of those clients so I know who I will be seeing that day and any important background information. This includes checking to see if they have recently changed dietary requirements with our meals on wheels teams.
Once this has been completed, I phone each of the clients to confirm that they are still ok for the visit to go ahead. I now read through all the clients previous case notes to bring myself back up to speed with the case, as the last time I would have seen the client would be either a month ago or alternatively it could be a new case so I would need to check their journey so far.
Where all of our team are working remotely and going into peoples houses, Â we have a buddy system in place meaning we have someone who is keeping an eye out to make sure we finish an appointment when we are expected to. This is a safety measure to ensure we are all safe and well whilst carrying out our duties. The requests for buddies usually start coming in at 8.30am, so I check which ones I am able to help out with.
Time for visits
I usually leave around 9.45am – 10.15 am to begin my visits for the day. This all depends on the distance as I cover both Letchworth and Hertford areas.
When I arrive at my first visit of the day I begin by talking with the client, checking to see how they are both mentally and emotionally, and to see if they are physically able to be weighed. Once the client is weighed, we go through a set number of questions to establish the state of the clients health, medication, the client’s diet from morning to night, hydration amounts, etc. We also question and observe to establish whether the client is lonely, or may have undiagnosed bladder and bowel conditions, failing eyesight, dental problems, dementia, wellbeing and safeguarding concerns, just to mention a few. If we do have concerns about anything we find out, we refer on to the relevant agency where necessary. We have our clients wellbeing at the forefront of our minds during any visits, so we are always aware to look out for anything that might be going on.
Once the questions have been answered, we will give our advice on either nutrition needs or whether the client would benefit from a referral to other professionals to help them progress. Once completed we get full permission from the client to refer them to any relevant agency and then arrange for my next visit. We then let our buddy know we are leaving, and travel on to our next client and repeat the process.
Admin time
Once all my visits are completed, I have had lunch and travelled back home, there is usually about 1-1.5 hours to write up the client’s notes in our online reporting system, and complete any referrals to other agencies such as Age UK or GP letters due to any client deterioration. One of the things we can offer our Nutrition clients, are nutrition boosts which are small energy dense snacks to help clients gain weight. This is the point where I add the agreed nutrition boosts to the clients meals on wheels order, then update our meals computer system and let the teams know the client has been added.
When it gets to 5pm I finish for the day and reflect on my days work.
Come back next month when we will hear from Kian, another member of our Nutrition & Wellbeing team, but this time looking at the Nutrition Awareness Team side of the role.
We are so grateful to team members like Stuart. Are you interested in joining the HILS family alongside great people like Stuart? Check out our current vacancies, we’d love to hear from you.
