The Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability says Thank You with Afternoon Tea

Regular donors treated to afternoon tea

Last week saw more than 50 regular donors to the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability treated to an elegant afternoon tea in the De Lancey Lowe room to say thank you for their ongoing support to the work of the hospital and to showcase the intricacies of the work of the speech and language therapists and the catering team.

Speech and language therapist, Alice Howard, talked to our guests about how complex swallowing can be for people with a brain injury, and what strategies and techniques are used at the RHN to help them.  She illustrated this work with the story of how the speech and language therapists helped a woman who was admitted to the RHN completely unable to eat and drink, but after therapy is now is able to dine with her family.

Catering manager, Mark Baker, then explained to our guests how food is designed and prepared for people who have difficulty swallowing, and the challenges involved in making food for this group of people still look and taste appealing.

There was an opportunity to taste some of the special diets that the catering team produce every day, and guests were asked to be food detectives by identifying what the food was without the usual visual clues of texture and shape.

Legacy Manager, Isabel Barrett, said,

“This was a chance to say thank you to some of our most dedicated supporters by treating them to afternoon tea. We couldn’t do our work without them, and we thought it would be interesting for them to see the innovative work that the speech and language therapists and catering department do to enable patients’ rehabilitation.”