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, low sodium, vegetarian, soft, dairy restricted, legume restricted, and pureed diets. To meet our client's cultural and religious food practices, we offer diets containing no red meat, no pork and no seafood diets.

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.