ABSTRACT

It is imperative to offer appropriate nutrition for the vulnerable older adults with both physical disabilities and chronic diseases. It was examined the Seoul City’s case on the framework of food and nutrition security for the adults as the welfare recipients in this article. The customized meals-on-wheels delivery services were applied as a half-year pilot project to 135 vulnerable community-dwelling older adults in health and finance in 2019. At the same time, dietitians provided the door-to-door counseling services on both nutrition and hygiene to them for the period. As a result of analyzing changes before and after the project, it was confirmed that the adults’ psychological and physical status as well as nutritional intake. Moreover, based on checking and assessing the current conditions of diet, nutrition, and hygiene management for 170 long-term care facilities certified by the Seoul City, the criteria for meal management of the facilities were established in 2020. The criteria contains essential indices (e.g. hiring a full-time dietitian, meals cooked at the facility) that the facilitates should abide by, and are currently applied to the certified facilities since 2021. Thanks to the customized meals-on-wheels project as well as establishing the criteria, both the long-term care facilities and senior welfare centers and their personnel concerned would have paid more attention to providing a higher quality of meal services to the vulnerable older adults. In order to sustain managing nutrition to and providing safe meals for the older adults within the welfare system, it is necessary to hire certified nutrition mangers, increase unit price of the meals, and support to improve the meal service facilities.