Food quality and service at health facilities under the authority of Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) remains a cause among many residents in Powell River.
Approximately 80 people attended a recent public meeting and most expressed dissatisfaction with Sodexo, the multinational company that is contracted to provide food service at all VCH institutions, including Powell River General Hospital, Willingdon Creek Village and Evergreen Extended Care Unit.
“I hope we get a critical mass of citizens in Powell River to engage them in a way that we have a community consensus that things have to change in institutional food in Powel River,” said Murray Dobbin, steering committee member of Powell River Voices, which sponsored the first of three in a series of public events.
The first meeting featured Colleen Kimmett, a Vancouver-based journalist who wrote an investigative series on hospital food. According to Kimmett, if enough people complain about the food that is being served by Sodexo and there is an ally within the institution, change is possible.
People were successful at changing food quality and service at Guelph, Ontario’s St. Joseph’s Health Centre Hospital with a successful campaign that overcame operational obstructions, said Kimmett. She said the campaign gave administrators a “food headache.”
“They were really getting a lot of complaints about the quality of food and that’s what prompted them to finally take action,” said Kimmett. “Maybe that’s an approach that could work. Give the hospital administration a bad food headache.”
Evergreen Extended Care Unit residents’ council secretary Elaine Steiger, one of the people who drew attention to the problems with Sodexo’s food services in Powell River last September, said she hopes more public discourse will be the beginning of change.
According to Steiger, the complaints brought against Sodexo in the fall appear to have been addressed. “Things have improved, but it’s not ideal,” she said.
In the fall, incidents of food shortages and quality came to public attention, with criticism directed at Sodexo and VCH. In one instance, residents of Willingdon Creek Village were given Boost as a meal supplement.
Fred Guerin, philosophy professor at Vancouver Island University Powell River, said quality and nutritional value of food that is provided at the hospital and seniors residences is far below what it should be. One idea, he said, was to go into the institutions, talk to patients, collect feedback and bring it forward to the public.
“People often don’t want to buy into that because they’re being treated in a hospital and they don’t want to rock the boat,” said Guerin. “The same is true of the people actually making the food.”
Dobbin said he hopes the feedback from the group that attended the recent meeting will identify doctors, nurses, city councillors, organizations, institutions and key individuals in Powell River that need to be involved.
City of Powell River councillors Rob Southcott and Maggie Hathaway, along with chief administrative officer Mac Fraser, were in attendance. Southcott said grassroots movements can become instigators of change.
“It’s not a big leap that community can take responsibility,” said Southcott. “We have the talent and the initiative.”
Reclaiming services as a community, such as institutional food, is closer in Powell River than most other places, according to Southcott.
“The piece that is missing,” he said, “is how the provincial money for health comes back into the communities so that we can do what needs to be done and with the capacity to do it.”
The next event in the series takes place March 21 at Vancouver Island University’s Powell River campus. It will feature Colleen Fuller, a health care researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Fuller’s focus will be on BC initiatives that involve the community in designing effective health care.
