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Food Hygiene in Domiciliary Care Policy

Policy Statement

This domiciliary care organisation believes that, where care provided to people who use the services includes help with the cooking, storing, preparing or serving of food, then the organisation has a duty to ensure that all people are protected from food-related illness by the adoption of high standards of food hygiene and preparation.

Food Hygiene Policy

{{org_field_name}} believes that the effective management of food safety relies heavily on having effective operational policies for the safe preparation, storage and handling of food. Therefore, {{org_field_name}} operates the following procedures.

1. All food should be prepared, cooked, stored and presented in accordance with the high standards required by the Food Safety Act 1990 and the Food Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013.
2. In all cases, where food is to be prepared in the home of the person receiving care, a preliminary risk assessment of the available food preparation and storage facilities should be carried out. Where a home requires improvements or changes these should be discussed with the person or their family prior to food preparation taking place. Where conditions are assessed as unacceptable then alternative methods of food provision should be sought.
3. Care staff should keep all food preparation areas, storage areas and serving areas clean while they are using them. All tools and equipment such as knives, utensils and chopping boards must also be cleaned regularly during the cooking process.
4. Adequate sanitary and hand-washing facilities should be available within the kitchen, including a supply of soap and paper towels for hand drying. All care staff must wash their hands before and after handling foodstuffs. All foodstuffs should also be washed before use.
5. Everyone in a food handling area must maintain a high level of personal cleanliness and food handlers must wear suitable clean and, where appropriate, protective clothing.
6. Staff preparing food should take all reasonable, practical steps to avoid the risk of contamination of food or ingredients.
7. Food storage areas should protect food against external sources of contamination such as pests.
8. Food handlers must receive adequate supervision, instruction and training in food hygiene.
9. When serving food, all staff should scrupulously observe appropriate hygiene standards.
10. Suspected outbreaks of food-related illness should be reported immediately to the person’s GP.
11. Any member of care staff who becomes ill while handling food should stop work at once and report to their line manager/supervisor. Care staff involved in food handling who are ill should see their GP and should only return to work when their GP states that they are safe to do so.

In addition care staff should:

1. always wash their hands after visiting the lavatory
2. ensure that all food stored in the refrigerator is covered and adequately chilled
3. ensure the thorough cooking and reheating of all meat, especially poultry
4. ensure that deep-frozen food is thawed before cooking (especially important when using a microwave oven)
5. be aware of the risk of Salmonella infection associated with foods containing uncooked eggs, such as mayonnaise and certain puddings
6. wash hands after handling raw meat or eggs, particularly before handling other foods
7. never reuse utensils with which raw eggs or meat have been prepared without first washing them with hot water and detergent
8. never allow juices from raw meat to come into contact with other foods (cooked food and uncooked food should not be stored together)
9. avoid serving raw eggs (or uncooked foods made from them) to vulnerable people such as the elderly and the sick (all eggs should be cooked until they are hard — both yolk and white).

Training

All home care staff involved in the provision of food to people who use the services should be appropriately trained and assessed to ensure that their catering skills and infection control techniques are of an acceptable standard.

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Responsible Person: {{org_field_registered_manager_first_name}} {{org_field_registered_manager_last_name}}

Reviewed on: {{last_update_date}}

Next Review Date: {{next_review_date}}

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