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Available Services
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Program Requirements
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Referring Agencies
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Available Services
Service
Services have been continually refined and enhanced
in response to changes in the HIV/AIDS epidemic and
provide a continuum of nutritional services that meets
the varied needs of this diverse community. The services
of Daily Home Delivered Meals, Meals for a Week,
Nutritional Counseling, and the daily contact with
clients by volunteer and staff delivery people have a
significant positive impact on the quality of life for
our clients by:
- Making the difference between life and death.
- Improving health and enhancing medication
adherence.
- Allowing clients to maintain independent living,
and hence, their role in the family.
Moveable Feast provides both Daily Home Delivered
Meals, and Meals for a Week service to not only the
HIV-infected individual, but dependent children,
spouses, and caretakers in the household. Family service
allows mothers and fathers to meet their own self-care
needs in living with HIV/AIDS and to maintain their role
as parents without the worry that they may not be able
to meet the nutritional needs of their children.
Daily Home Delivered Meals
Moveable Feast's original service, the Daily Home
Delivered Meals program is provided five days per week,
with a double delivery on Fridays for weekend meal
coverage. Each delivery consists of three meals
(breakfast, lunch, and dinner), and in some cases,
depending on the client's health status, liquid
nutritional supplements to increase daily caloric
intake. Each client's specific needs are met by
providing diverse menus appropriate to the individual's
health status. Moveable Feast meets special dietary
needs with renal, diabetic, soft, vegetarian (including
poultry and seafood), no dairy and no seafood diets. To
accommodate our client's cultural and religious food
practices, along with providing food lower in saturated
fat, none of our food contains pork.
Meals for a Week
In 1997, Moveable Feast responded to changes in the
HIV epidemic by implementing the Meals for a Week
program in the surrounding counties of Baltimore City.
The Meals for a Week program provides a less intensive
level of service that meets the needs of people with
symptomatic HIV or AIDS who are becoming healthier and
more independent due to more effective drug therapies.
The Meals for a Week program targets clients who are
transitioning from a homebound status to increased
activities of daily living or because their medical care
requirements require them to be away from home for
extended periods. Meals for a Week provides a weekly
delivery of a bag of groceries and five frozen entrees
that were prepared by Moveable Feast. Groceries empower
the client by providing the client with a "safety net"
for times when they may be too fatigued or ill to
prepare their own meals.
For more information on Client Services, please call
Nancy Etheridge-Guest, the
Coordinator of Client Services, at
410/327-3420, ext. 13
Nutritional Counseling
Nutritional assessment and counseling services are
provided by Moveable Feast's Registered Dietician who
assesses the nutritional status of each new client in
both Moveable Feast's Daily Home Delivered Meals and
Meals for a Week services within the first two weeks of
the client being on service. After the initial
assessment, effort is made to contact clients for
ongoing nutritional counseling at a minimum of once
every three months. However, nutritional counseling is
available whenever clients are in need; and many clients
use this service frequently.
Nutritional counseling consists of assessing
nutrition status and developing meal plans to fit the
client's life. Nutritional counseling in combination
with the food and meal services offered by Moveable
Feast is a powerful weapon in fighting the wasting
associated with AIDS. This counseling prevents the
problems associated with under-nutrition by providing
information about appropriate diets and healthy eating
habits. Education on food safety, nutritional strategies
that support medication adherence, and ways to manage
medication side effects are all aspects of nutritional
counseling that are important to the entire spectrum of
HIV-infected individuals.
For more information on nutritional counseling,
please call the
Nutritionist, Shannon Lunnen, at 410/327-3420, ext.
34.
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