To make this my mission at work? NHS/ retail related, please help!

[Areyoubeingservedhen]

Hello all,
I work in a secure hospital for mental illness. Most of the patients are men. We have a terrible terribly high rate of obesity/ morbid obesity due to the meds and these guys not having access to much exercise equipment. They're also lacking in motivation and nutritional information a lot of the time.
My main bugbear is that we have a vending machine in the hospital and that is pretty much it. We have a cafe which opens twice a week at lunchtime and sells sandwiches and homemade quiches but it's just reliant on one guy so if he's not in then it doesn't open.
Because of this the service users buy a lot of stuff from the vending machine, we estimated about £70-£100 per month! It's very overpriced and they have a captive audience who have no access to anything else apart from hospital food, toast and fruit. It's also a bit social. They get to go to the vending machine and see other staff/ service users. They get off the ward for a bit. Plus they get a mars bar.
My idea is for us to open the cafe when it's not in use and run it as a tuck shop 9-5 every day. It will sell healthy snacks and drinks at cost price (as we wouldn't want to make a profit) and also provide a social space. We would in the long run get service users to work there with staff and gain some skills which could be used for employment. Also maybe in the future we could make healthy snacks to sell (energy bars, protein balls, flapjacks.)
Can anyone see anything wrong with my business model? For example I wonder how much we would have to buy from a wholesaler, who would collect it, would they deliver? Also who would run the shop, would it be an HCA or would we hire a retail person. Presumably they would have to be trained in how to deal with any confrontation or abuse? Would we be allowed to sell multipacks or would we have to buy individual packs of things to sell even if we are not for profit? Would they still buy from the vending machines (we can't get rid as tied into a contract.)
Any help would be much appreciated before I speak to the head of operations! I'm a lowly administrator so I need to seem like I know what I'm talking about although I have ten years retail experience so know more about that side of things than the clinicians.

No advice but just wanted to say how lovely you sound - good luck!

@SecureUnit oh no, we've just had our peer review. Why didn't have this idea last week?

Op I would also think of all the things that can go wrong and then come up with ways of managing that risk. It will make it harder for management to just list those reasons as why it can’t be done. Good luck, I’m sure it will be a lot of work but it is a very positive thing.

@quincejamplease yes, co-production will be key. We will involve service users in choosing what they want to buy, as well as training them in retail. They can make the posters, point of sale tickets. We won't dictate what they can and can't buy. Hopefully though seeing a human face at the till will be better than buying a 90p mars bar.

I don't know anything about this kind of thing but just wanted to say that I think it is brilliant that you care so much about your service users and are trying to look for ways to help. I also work in the NHS and I find it depressing that often ideas are stifled unless a cost saving can be demonstrated. Can you try to figure out any way of demonstrating a saving? Has anywhere else done anything similar and been able to show, say, a decreased length of stay in service users who engage in such projects? I know it shouldn't be about that, it should be about actual benefit to the people you are caring for, but in my experience at least, managerial ears prick up at the words "cost improvement ".
Good luck, and keep caring!

To add to my earlier comment, if OT are cooking with patients, surely it’s not too much more to cook for a tuck shop? If you get enough patients on board you should be able to claim some of the meal allowance back - depending on your funding, but we did it in a children’s Hospital ( cooking one lunch a week with the kids for all the kids on that ward) also you could try contacting the real junk food project in your area- collecting short date ingredients and food that you could then put to use - would tick trust environment targets too😀

Have Messaged you

I am an OT and thnk this is a brilliant idea - you really need to get the OTs on board, reading between the lines it sounds like you suggested it but they weren't that enthusiastic which is disappointing. Keep plugging away at the OTs though because they could really help and it would be a fantastic way to involve the service users in occupational activities - bread and butter OT really.
Good luck I really hope you get it off the ground.

MH OTs will use cooking as an assessment of functional skills, mohosts, etc.
I can think of a lot of reasons why this may not be feasible in the short term.
How about developing psychoeducation and healthy lifestyles alongside this?

I think in principal it’s a great idea

But how it will help the main issue, obesity, I don’t know. These guys want to lose weight? If they did they would avoid vending machines AND cafes such as your proposed one

Flapjacks/cereal bars/protein balls... as many calories as in a mars bar unfortunately

Secure hospital I work with have a cafe that is run with the help of a selected few patients

There are many things to think about when working with patients - what you can serve, allergies (are they fully aware of their allergies) food preparation hygiene- many may struggle with this

Also safety issues knives, boiling water

The guys I work with who have come from secure hospitals are more often than not overweight- then they gain more as no matter how many times we cook with them and show them health options (they will cook and eat when the food is free) for most it’s back to take always or microwave meals when left to feed themselves

It’s very very hard to motivate them particularly with some because of their medication It impacts their appetites and energy (how some of them sleep with the amount of energy drinks they have I don’t know) also habits tend to be harder to break especially when they have been in hospital for a while they become so conditioned to things being a certain way

I think if you plan is thorough with a breakdown of costs, covers health and safety issues and also showing awareness of potential issues, how it can and should benefit the patients, and how it will be run

Projects like this cause a huge amount of paperwork for others so really the plan needs to be very well presented don’t rush it

Good luck and I am sure some of the patients will want to get involved on some level