Assisted Eating and Drinking

Assisted eating and drinking training delivered at your workplace or online. Half a day. Real scenarios. The skills and confidence your team needs to support people safely, with dignity, every mealtime

Course Overview

In one care home session, a team leader pointed out something that stopped the room. She had noticed that her staff never sat down at mealtimes. They stood over the people they were supporting, loading a fork, holding it out, waiting. Nobody had told them to do it that way. Nobody had told them not to. It was just what they did. And for the people sitting in those chairs, being hovered over while they ate, it was quietly undignified every single day.

That is the kind of thing this training is built to change. Not clinical theory. Actual practice.

Mealtime support is one of the most frequent things care workers do, and one of the most consequential. Assisted Eating and Drinking Training gives care staff the practical knowledge and person-centred approach to support individuals with their nutrition and hydration safely, respectfully, and in line with their care plan. It covers positioning, pace, dignity, adaptive equipment, recording, escalation, and protected mealtime principles. What it does not do is lecture staff on nutrition science. The focus is on what happens at the table, because that is where practice either works or it does not. The course maps directly to Care Certificate Standard 8: Fluids and Nutrition and is aligned to CQC Regulation 14: Meeting Nutritional and Hydration Needs, which requires providers to ensure people receive adequate nutrition and hydration and the support they need to achieve it.

What surprises many teams is how many mealtime failures have nothing to do with clinical knowledge. A care worker standing rather than sitting. Inappropriate cutlery makes independence harder. Staff completing paperwork at the table, treating a meal as an admin opportunity. A rushed pace because the trolley needs to be back in the kitchen. None of those are trained out automatically. They are habits, and habits change with training.

Course Details

  • Duration: 3 hours
  • Delivery: Face-to-face at your workplace or chosen venue, or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams
  • Certificate: CPD-accredited Certificate of Achievement in Assisted Eating and Drinking
  • Validity: No formal expiry. Refresher recommended every 2 to 3 years, or sooner following a significant incident or change in service user needs
  • Group size: Maximum 15 learners per trainer

Who This Course Is For

This course is right for anyone who supports people with eating and drinking in a care setting.

  • Care assistants and support workers in care homes, supported living, and domiciliary care
  • Personal assistants working with an individual employer
  • New starters working toward the Care Certificate
  • Experienced staff who want a structured refresher
  • Staff supporting individuals living with dementia, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, frailty, reduced mobility, poor appetite, or swallowing concerns
  • Anyone responsible for monitoring food and fluid intake and escalating concerns

No previous qualifications are needed. If your team also needs training on swallowing difficulties and texture modification, our Dysphagia Awareness course covers that ground. The two work well together for settings supporting people post-stroke or with neurological conditions.

Why Organisations Book With Prima Cura

Most training providers arrive with a course. We arrive with yours.

Before the day, we gather information about your workplace: your incident reporting forms, your internal procedures, and the specific hazards your team actually faces. On the day, your trainer works that into every scenario, every discussion, every practical exercise. If your staff work in a care home, they’re not practising on hypothetical office workers. If your team are lone workers, that context shapes how the session runs.

It means the training lands. Not because it was well-delivered in a generic sense, but because it was relevant to the people in the room and the situations they’ll actually encounter.

A few other things that matter to the organisations that book with us:

  • 98.9% learner satisfaction across all Prima Cura courses
  • All trainers hold Enhanced DBS certificates and maintain ongoing CPD
  • We advise honestly on the qualification level at the enquiry stage. If a different course is a better fit for your workforce, we’ll say so before you book, not after

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

What Learners Will Be Able to Do

By the end of the course, learners will be able to:

  • Support individuals to make informed choices about what they eat and drink, respecting preferences, culture, and dignity
  • Recognise common eating and drinking difficulties and the associated risks, including choking and aspiration
  • Apply protected mealtime principles in practice: what they are, why they matter, and what they look like in your setting
  • Provide practical mealtime support safely, including correct positioning, appropriate pace, prompting, and supporting independence wherever possible
  • Choose and use adaptive utensils and mealtime aids appropriately
  • Monitor and record food and fluid intake accurately using food and fluid charts
  • Use the MUST (Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool) where appropriate to role and setting
  • Recognise when concerns need escalating and who to involve, including GPs, Speech and Language Therapists, dietitians, and district nurses
  • Document concerns accurately and in line with the individual’s care plan

What the Day Covers

All content reflects CQC Regulation 14: Meeting Nutritional and Hydration Needs, Care Certificate Standard 8, and current Skills for Care guidance throughout. Content is adapted to your setting and client group, but typically covers:

  • What safe, person-centred mealtime support looks like in real care environments
  • Dignity, choice, consent, and the difference between prompting and rushing
  • Protected mealtimes: the principle, the evidence, and how to apply it in your service
  • Preparing for mealtimes: environment, timing, positioning, reducing distractions, and communication
  • Practical techniques for assisting with eating and drinking, including appropriate seating and adaptive equipment
  • Recognising and responding to concerns, including early signs of swallowing difficulties
  • The role of Speech and Language Therapy: when to refer and what to expect
  • Recording intake accurately: food and fluid charts, escalation notes, and care plan alignment
  • Malnutrition screening: an introduction to MUST and how it is used, where appropriate to role
  • When to escalate and who to involve, including GP, SALT, dietitian, district nurse, and internal leads
  • Risk assessment and care planning in safe mealtime support

Every course is also built to include your industry-specific common risks and your organisation’s incident reporting systems as standard.

How the Course Is Delivered

This course is available face-to-face at your workplace or chosen venue, or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Both formats are fully interactive. Online delivery does not mean a recording and a quiz. It means a live session with the same discussion, scenarios, and trainer engagement as the room-based version.

Sessions are delivered at your workplace or chosen venue. Groups are capped at 15 to ensure every learner gets sufficient time for discussion and questions. Every session is built around your working environment, your sector’s risks, and your internal reporting procedures. We also design each course to incorporate your specific workplace hazards, your organisation’s layout, and the findings of your needs assessment. If you haven’t carried out a needs assessment yet, we can guide you through what’s involved during the enquiry process.

Delivery includes:

  • Practical demonstration and discussion of mealtime positioning, equipment, and technique
  • Scenario-based learning drawn from real care situations, built around your client group
  • Honest conversation about the habits and shortcuts that put people at risk
  • Coverage of your food and fluid recording systems and escalation routes
  • Time for questions. Mealtime care generates them, and they deserve proper answers

Why This Training Matters

Under CQC Regulation 14: Meeting Nutritional and Hydration Needs, providers are legally required to ensure people receive adequate nutrition and hydration and the support they need to achieve it. Offering the food is not enough if someone cannot eat independently and staff do not know how to help them safely. Inspectors look at what mealtime support actually looks like in practice, not just what the care plan says.

Poor nutrition and hydration in care settings affect mood, skin integrity, wound healing, infection risk, falls risk, cognitive function, and overall quality of life. In serious cases, the consequences are life-changing. And yet many of the failures that lead to those consequences are not clinical at all. They are practice failures, and practice failures are exactly what training addresses.

Protected mealtime standards exist precisely because of this. The principle is that mealtimes should be free from non-essential interruptions so that individuals receive focused, unrushed support and can eat and drink in a calm, dignified environment. Non-urgent tasks, ward rounds, and paperwork happen before or after, not during. Staff are present, engaged, and focused on the individuals they are supporting. For providers working toward or maintaining a Good or Outstanding CQC rating, protected mealtime practice is one of the clearest ways to demonstrate genuine person-centred care in action.

This course also maps directly to Care Certificate Standard 8: Fluids and Nutrition, making it appropriate for new starters working through their Care Certificate as well as experienced staff refreshing practice.

Certification and Validity

On completion, learners receive a CPD-accredited Certificate of Achievement in Assisted Eating and Drinking. There is no formal expiry, but a refresher is recommended every 2 to 3 years, or sooner following a significant incident, a change in service user needs, or where an internal or external review identifies a gap in practice. Many organisations align this with their mandatory training cycle. Our Assisted Eating and Drinking refresher is the natural next step when that cycle comes around.

Where We Deliver

We deliver in-house training at your workplace or chosen venue across Manchester, Greater Manchester, and the wider North West. We also deliver nationally across England, including North England, South England, London, and Surrey. All sessions are led by experienced Prima Cura Training instructors. Every trainer holds an Enhanced DBS certificate. Groups are capped at 15 per trainer to protect the quality of hands-on learning.

FAQs

Is this the same as Dysphagia training?

No. This course focuses on safe assisted mealtime support: positioning, pace, dignity, recording, and escalation. Dysphagia training covers the clinical detail of swallowing difficulties, texture modification, and the management of specific swallowing disorders. They cover different ground, and for settings supporting people post-stroke or with neurological conditions, running both is worth considering. The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists has clear guidance on when SALT involvement is needed and what good dysphagia management looks like.

What does “protected mealtimes” mean, and is it a legal requirement?

Protected mealtimes is a standard of good practice, not currently a statutory requirement in adult social care in England. But it is referenced in CQC good practice guidance and consistently associated with better outcomes and higher inspection ratings. For providers aiming for Good or Outstanding, it is the kind of practice inspectors look for because it demonstrates genuine commitment to person-centred care rather than process compliance. We cover it in this course because knowing the principle and actually applying it in a busy care setting are two different things.

Will you cover MUST and food and fluid charts?

Yes, where appropriate to the roles and setting of the group. MUST is a validated screening tool developed by BAPEN (British Association for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition) and is widely used in care home and community settings. We cover how it is used in practice and what to do with the outcome. Food and fluid chart recording is covered for all groups.

Can you adapt this to our specific service users?

Yes. Tell us about your client group, and we will build scenarios and examples around it. A care home supporting people with advanced dementia needs a different emphasis than a supported living service working with younger adults with physical disabilities. We adjust accordingly.

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Book or Enquire

To book this course or request a quote for your team, use the enquiry form on this page or contact us directly. Tell us your team size, your sector, and your preferred dates. We’ll come back with a quote and any advice on qualification level if you need it.

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Our Commitment to Quality and Compliance

At Prima Cura Training, all courses reflect current UK guidance and best practice. All trainers are experienced professionals with relevant qualifications and ongoing CPD. Because many of the organisations we support work with vulnerable individuals, all trainers hold Enhanced DBS checks.

This course is reviewed against updates from Skills for Care, the Care Quality Commission, BAPEN, and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, and current UK legislation, including the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 and the Care Act 2014. You can read more on our Quality Assurance and Compliance page.

Reviewed by Stephanie Austin, Owner and Lead Trainer, Prima Cura Training | 25+ years in health and social care | 15+ years as a trainer | Last reviewed: April 2026 | Next review: April 2027

This page is for general guidance only and reflects UK legislation and good practice current at the date of review. It does not constitute legal or clinical advice. Where individuals present with swallowing difficulties, nutritional concerns, or changes in eating and drinking behaviour, advice should be sought from an appropriately qualified healthcare professional. Prima Cura Training accepts no liability for decisions made on the basis of this content alone.

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