Meals on Wheels services can be vital lifelines for adults with support needs who have difficulty accessing and preparing food
The map is easy to use and has the potential to relieve pressures on social care systems across all four UK nations
Dr Angeliki Papadaki, Associate Professor in Public Health Nutrition
People across the United Kingdom will now be able to go online and search for Meals on Wheels providers who deliver to their area, thanks to a new interactive map launched today that has been developed by researchers at the University of Bristol.
The new map could prove a valuable resource to help relieve pressures on social care systems across all four UK nations.
Meals on Wheels services provide meals alongside care within the home and important social contact, and are provided by councils, other local organisations, and local and national private providers. These services can be vital lifelines for adults with support needs, including older adults, adults with disabilities and those with poor physical and mental health, who have difficulty accessing and preparing food.
In the UK, these Meals on Wheels services tend to be provided on a local, regional or national scale by hundreds of different providers, rather than overseen by a central national organisation.
Dr Angeliki Papadaki, Associate Professor in Public Health Nutrition, identified that, remarkably, there has been no central information list of Meals on Wheels services across the UK until now.
Dr Papadaki and her research team at the University of Bristol's School for Policy Studies
