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’d 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’s the kind of thing this training is built to change. Not clinical theory. Actual practice.
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. The focus is on what happens at the table, because that’s where practice either works or it doesn’t. The course maps directly to Care Certificate Standard 8: Fluids and Nutrition and is aligned to CQC Regulation 14: Meeting Nutritional and Hydration Needs.
Course Details
- Duration: Half day (3 hours)
- Delivery: Face-to-face in-house or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams
- Certificate: CPD-Accredited Certificate of Achievement in Assisted Eating and Drinking
- Awarding organisations: CPD-Accredited
- Validity: No formal expiry. A refresher is 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, specifically Standard 8: Fluids and Nutrition
- Experienced staff who want a structured refresher
- Staff supporting individuals living with dementia, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, frailty, reduced mobility, or poor appetite
- 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 and works well alongside this one for settings supporting people post-stroke or with neurological conditions. Not sure which courses your team needs? Get in touch, and we’ll help you work it out before you commit.
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 food isn’t enough if someone can’t eat independently and staff don’t know how to help them safely. Inspectors assess 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. Many of the failures that lead to those consequences aren’t clinical. They’re practice failures: a rushed pace, inappropriate cutlery, staff completing paperwork at the table. Practice failures are exactly what training addresses.
This course maps directly to Care Certificate Standard 8: Fluids and Nutrition, updated by Skills for Care in March 2025, making it appropriate for new starters working through their Care Certificate as well as experienced staff refreshing practice. You can read more about what the updated Care Certificate standards require in our Care Certificate UK Guide.
What the Session Covers
All content reflects CQC Regulation 14: Meeting Nutritional and Hydration Needs, Care Certificate Standard 8, and current Skills for Care guidance throughout. Topics covered include:
- 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’s used, where appropriate to role
- When to escalate and who to involve: 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 is not a recording or a quiz. It’s a live session with the same discussion, scenarios, and trainer engagement as the room-based version.
Groups are capped at 15 to ensure every learner gets sufficient time for discussion. 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.
- 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
Certification and Validity
On completion, learners receive a CPD-Accredited Certificate of Achievement in Assisted Eating and Drinking. There’s 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.
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, 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.
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. Groups are capped at 15 per trainer to protect the quality of hands-on learning.
Our associate network means we can deliver across England. You can meet the team on our Associates page.
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 details of swallowing difficulties, texture modification, and the management of specific swallowing disorders. They cover different ground. For settings supporting people post-stroke or with neurological conditions, running both is worth considering. Our Dysphagia Awareness course is the natural companion
What does “protected mealtimes” mean, and is it a legal requirement?
Protected mealtimes are 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. The principle is that mealtimes should be free from non-essential interruptions so individuals receive focused, unrushed support in a calm, dignified environment. For providers aiming for Good or Outstanding, it is exactly the kind of practice inspectors look for.
Will you cover MUST and food and fluid charts?
Yes, where appropriate to the roles and setting of the group. MUST is a validated malnutrition screening tool developed by BAPEN 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.
Related Courses
You may also be interested in:
- Dysphagia Awareness
- Nutrition and Hydration in Care Settings
- Safe Medication Administration
- Communication in Care
- Food Hygiene
Book or Enquire
Book your training or request a quote
Tell us your team size and your sector. We’ll come back with a quote, the right advice on qualification level, and a straight answer on whether this is the best course for your team.
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: June 2026 | Next review: June 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. Employers remain responsible for determining the appropriate level of training for their workforce and ensuring their arrangements comply with CQC Regulation 14 and relevant care sector legislation.
