Caterers want a role in care-home meal assessments

Social services caterers are to lobby the Government to try to ensure adequate checks on meals provided in care homes are covered by a new inspection system.

Health secretary Frank Dobson last month announced plans for a new independent inspection regime that will make for consistent standards across homes in different local authority areas.

But the Advisory Body for Social Services Catering (ABSSC) believes most inspectors are ill-equipped to check on standards of catering. It plans to write to Dobson asking to be consulted on how meals should be assessed.

ABSSC chairman Roger Denton said: "We would like to train people or draw up some kind of model to be used to assess the catering."