With age, many people no longer have the ability to go shopping and prepare their meals. Others, often seniors who live alone, no longer feel like preparing meals for themselves due to lack of motivation or appetite. Home meal delivery for seniors is therefore a good solution because this service facilitates the daily lives of the elderly, ensures that they continue to eat well, and also maintains social ties since the meal deliverers intervene very regularly at home. seniors. Different service providers can provide this service, from local authorities to home help services, including private companies. Our advice for choosing the right home meal delivery service for seniors.
With age, and especially the loss of autonomy, it becomes more difficult for elderly people who live at home to prepare meals themselves. First, because going out to go shopping is not always possible for seniors who have difficulty getting around. Then, many elderly people live alone at home and the desire to prepare good meals, or even simply to eat, is no longer there due to a lack of motivation or appetite often due to aging.
Having your meals delivered to your home by a service provider is therefore a good solution for seniors to continue to have a balanced diet, and also to make their daily lives easier. This service, specially intended for seniors, guarantees the benefit of food that meets strict hygiene standards and food traceability rules. It is also the assurance of benefiting from a balanced diet fully adapted to the nutritional needs of the elderly. Assets that allow older people to stay healthy and prevent certain diseases. Eating well every day, enjoying a varied diet, also maintains morale!
In addition, calling on this type of service provider is also a guarantee for the relatives of the senior who has his meals delivered to their homes of monitoring and being alerted if signs of malnutrition are observed on a day-to-day basis thanks to the passages regular meal deliverers.
Several types of service providers can provide home meal delivery for seniors. First, some municipalities offer this kind of service. To find out if this is the case where you live, contact your town hall or the municipal center for social action (CCAS) in your municipality.
Home delivery of meals for seniors can also be provided by home help and support services, service providers whose mission is to promote and maintain the autonomy of the elderly in their homes. These home help services also usually take charge of services such as, if necessary, the maintenance of seniors' housing, help them with their toilets, to get dressed, accompany them on their outings, offer remote assistance, etc.
Finally, home delivery of meals for seniors can be carried out by associative organizations or private companies.
In concrete terms, if you use a home meal delivery service for seniors, the service provider lets you choose the number of meals you want in a week, as well as a choice of menus that can be adapted to your needs (diet without salt, without cholesterol, without carbohydrates, etc.). Your meals are then delivered to you in the form of trays that you must reheat as needed, most often for a few minutes in a microwave.
Meals generally consist of a starter, main course, cheese and dessert.
These meal trays are in principle delivered once a day, or according to the frequency you have decided, and weekend meals often on Fridays.
If you are looking for an organization that supports home meal delivery for seniors, you can first contact your municipality.
You also have the option of contacting the local information point near your residence. These are local reception desks whose mission is to inform the elderly and their relatives, often called Local Gerontological Information and Coordination Center (CLIC) or support and respite platforms, more specifically designed to meet the needs of caregivers. The national information portal for the elderly and their relatives (pour-les-personnes-agees.gouv.fr) provides a directory on its website to find the list of these information points by department or by municipality .
Once you have a list of structures or companies capable of delivering your meals to your home, compare their offers to choose the one that seems best to you and best suited to your needs.
In general, these service providers must be able to offer you a range of varied, complete and balanced meals. Pay attention also to the quality, freshness and seasonality of the products that make up the meals. Having meals delivered to your home must indeed rhyme with having fun when it comes to food.
If you have to follow a specific diet for health reasons or allergies, for example, choose a home meal delivery service provider that takes these particularities into account and adapts perfectly to your nutritional needs. Some of them also offer the services of dieticians who are at your disposal and available to answer your questions about food. A necessity to stay healthy while eating!
Also favor service providers who regularly ask their customers about their wishes, what would make them happy to eat, and who give precise information on the preparation and consumption of the meals delivered.
In short, in a nutshell, choosing the right home meal delivery service for seniors means choosing the one that best meets your expectations.
Depending on the service provider chosen to deliver meals to a senior, the costs vary according to the meals themselves and the rate applied for home delivery. Count on average 10 to 12 euros for a delivery service provided by a private company. Public bodies can offer rates based on the income of the elderly person.
Seniors who use home help and support services to have meals delivered to their homes benefit from a tax credit equal to 50% of their annual expenses for this service.
On the other hand, regardless of the type of service provider you use to have your meals delivered to your home, if you are over 60, are losing your autonomy, and you receive the personalized allowance of autonomy (APA), you can finance part of the cost of the delivery of your meals thanks to this aid.
Seniors aged 65 and over (or 60 for those who are recognized as unfit for work) who do not benefit from the APA also have the possibility of benefiting from assistance to cover all or part of the delivery of their meal. at home, financial support paid by the departments. However, certain conditions must be met. One related to the loss of autonomy, that is to say that it is necessary to justify a state of health which does not allow the senior to cook or shop himself. The other concerns resource conditions:these must not be greater than 906.81 euros per month for a single elderly person, and 1,407.82 euros for a couple.
Seniors who are not entitled to the aid mentioned above to cover part of the cost of delivering their meals to their homes can contact their pension funds. Some of them, in fact, offer aid to cover part of the cost of this service.
