Mark Meacham, HC-One’s Head of Catering and Housekeeping Support Services won the prestigious ‘Above and Beyond Special Award’ at the Care Home and Hospital Catering Awards on Thursday 8th June 2023 at the Haberdashers Hall in London.
The awards celebrate talented Chefs and Catering Teams that have brought innovation and quality to care homes across the UK and rewards best practice in person-centred nutritional care.
Mark’s nomination really stood out, with his exceptional dedication to improving the nutritional wellbeing of older individuals living in care homes shone through his work at HC-One.
This includes:
• Launching an ambitious learning and development program, using a structured approach to rolling out training across all HC-One care homes, whilst balancing high operational demands.
• Introducing dietetic students from Manchester Metropolitan University in several of HC-One’s care homes, helping to improve HC-One’s understanding on how the environment can affect and improve HC-One’s nutritional offer.
• Leading an initiative to ensure Residents needing special diets have choice of nutritionally balanced restaurant standard food.
• Designing and building a database so his team can have oversight of all critical areas of the business all in one place including training stats, online workshops, feedback, catering audits, weight loss and food budgets. This has saved the team administerial work, allowing the team to focus on supporting homes.
• Building a strong relationship with Vegetarian for Life and has supported their Memory Care Pledge programme, which helps ensure that vegetarians or vegans who have capacity issues, or cognitive losses, to be offered a choice of meals, drinks and snacks that uphold their ethical beliefs.
Under Mark’s support and leadership, his team have made a significant impact on putting these initiatives firmly at the heart of the care HC-One offers.
Mark’s award achievement and recognition comes as HC-One continues to invest in its recruitment and retention of talented catering professionals across its family of care homes, by providing enhanced rates of pay and sector-leading training, including regular Chef Development Days, online workshops and learning tools designed to empower Colleagues.
Mark Meacham, Head of Catering and Housekeeping Support Services at HC-One, said:
“I am absolutely delighted to have won the ‘Above and Beyond Special Award’. Although it’s my name on the award, it’s very much a team effort. This is a real recognition of all the great work that my team has been doing at HC-One, so a big thank you to them for all of their hard work for our Residents.”
Chris Bonner, Executive Chef and Nutrition & Hydration Lead at HC-One who nominated Mark for the award commented:
“Winning at these prestigious awards is a testament to the passion and dedication Mark has demonstrated. Mark, supported by our fantastic team, has gone above and beyond to provide the kindest care to Residents living in our care homes and support to his Colleagues, Relatives and those within the local community, supporting HC-One’s mission to be the first-choice care provider in each of the communities that we serve.”
If you are interested in a career in Catering or Housekeeping at HC-One, please visit our website https://apply.hc-one.co.uk/ or call 0800 1690 229.