Food distribution within a municipality from different perspectives – older people, decision makers and professionals: an action research study

The present research project is one of Action Research (AR) projects in a region in southern part of Sweden, Scania. All the AR projects originate as result of a decision on the highest political level. The decision was to do changes within the care service where collaboration between different care organisations should be advocated in aim to support and help care consumers. The care should be provided in more care consumer centred ways in which care consumers should be in the centre. These changes should emphasise public and care users’ involvement and participation in decisions around the treatment, service development and evaluation. The participatory service should be performed through a constructive dialogue between care users, health care professionals as a catalyst to common practice change.  The overall aim of the project was to explore FD to older people living alone in their own  homes from different perspectives: elderly as consumers, decision-makers and various professionals.  The specific aims were: 1)to explore various professionals’ experiences in relation to their involvement in food distribution in order to get a comprehensive understanding of the organisation, responsibilities and roles in the specific context (“bottom-up” perspective);

2) to explore older people’s experiences of food distribution and their suggestions what they whish to change (“bottom-up” perspective); 3) to identify, suggest, implement and evaluate chosen actions issues together with various professionals and elderly people (“bottom-up” perspective); 4) the results from the studies 1-3 will be given as feedback to the decision-makers level and it will be start point for reflective reasoning by using Story Dialogue Method in aim to identify conditions for development of food distribution chain (“top-down” perspective).

 

The short paper and presentation, on how to identify the practical issues involved and what can be done to create a receptive context for change, would fit in the fourth key theme of the congress.