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My name is Anne Dudley, I am the Catering Support Officer for Hampshire County Council Adults Health and care team.

I support our 17 in house residential and nursing care homes and some of our day centres catering teams.

My role is very diverse, advising on menus planning, equipment purchases and kitchen refurbishments, writing policies and instructions to carrying our catering audits and supporting the staff with IDDSI, training, role profiles, recruiting and so the list goes on!

I am currently rolling out a new food safety management system, helping to open a new home and arranging interviews for several new chef manager positions.

This has been on hold as you can imagine with the Covid pandemic, but we are now holding first stage interviews away from the homes to get the ball rolling and help our teams get back on track.

Our catering teams have been fantastic during these difficult times, turning up for work like clockwork and adapting to resident’s dietary requirements whilst many have been poorly.

I even found myself back in the kitchen at Easter, juggling staff and supporting other homes with our sister company, HC3S to fill staffing gaps. What a great team we have between us!

Many projects have been on hold but are slowly coming back to the forefront, including a large project on improving the dining experience in our homes. Some great work done in collaboration with our dieticians, clinical staff and of course some of the amazing expertise we can draw on from the NACC, such as Oakhouse Kitchens, and the Menu planning file.

The NACC have continued to hold virtual meetings and we are currently looking to hold regional Zoom meetings too. Not easy to organise for you as we are all very busy people working in industry ourselves, but non the less dedicated to supporting our new and future members.

Please feel free to browse our website and get in contact if you want help or advice, that’s what we are therefore – supporting you our Carehome heroes.

Kind regards
Anne Dudley