Care homes that care

If you needed residential or nursing care as a vegetarian or vegan, you'd probably be curious about your options.

Currently, we are only aware of three fully vegetarian care homes in the UK. One of these is Karuna Manor in Harrow, established in April 2015.

Says Priya Mehta, Hotel Service Manager at Karuna Manor:

Karuna Manor is a high-quality and luxurious care home where the focus is on spirituality and quality of life. The design of the home and its entire operation are dedicated to that cause, from the beautiful peaceful living environment, the tasteful and private en-suite rooms, to the magnificent temple. 

We offer mainly Gujarati food, which is freshly cooked by our chef every day. The most popular dish is Undhiyu. It is a Gujarati mixed-vegetable dish that is a regional specialty of Surat, India. 

We cook all vegetarian meals every day, but will making the Undhiyu this National Vegetarian Week because it’s our most popular dish. 

At Karuna Manor we have created a home-from-home for our elderly community in Harrow, where they can continue to enjoy the very best in life.

We welcome all community members to visit, for ideas about how to set up a vegetarian care home.

Of course, should care be needed, many people would prefer to stay in close proximity to family and friends. And this is where V for Life's UK List comes in.

V for Life strives to improve standards of vegetarian and vegan catering in the care sector. A major way of doing this is by maintaining and promoting the UK List – a directory of care facilities and food suppliers that follow our best practice guide. Membership of the UK List already tops 1,250, with a wide geographical spread.

We're impressed by the lengths that many of our UK List members go to in catering well and ethically for the vegetarians and vegans in their care. You can see this first hand in our new film, released earlier this week.

We recently caught up with UK List member, Stuart Davies, Registered Manager at Plas Bryn Rhosyn in Neath. Plas Bryn Rhosyn celebrated Veganuary with Christina Rees MP earlier this year, and has just celebrated National Vegetarian Week.

Stuart says:

This week's vegetarian celebration went well and the residents really enjoyed a different menu. Some were very apprehensive at first, and weren’t keen on the idea of a no-meat menu, but they soon came round when they realised how good the food tasted! They’re now looking forward to having other new and different meal choices. The main menu for lunch consisted of a leek, potato, and ginger soup with homemade bread rolls, followed by vegetable and spicy lentil cottage pie.

No stranger to holding vegan events is the winner of V for Life's 2017 Award for Excellence in Vegetarian Care Catering – Hannah Mulholland, from Harper Fields Care Home in Coventry. Her autumn vegan festival is now a regular part of annual proceedings at the home – and you can take a peek behind the scenes, here.

It’s becoming impossible to ignore the demand for top-notch veggie care catering.

Please do share your own stories, and what you are doing to recognise events such as National Vegetarian Week. With your help, we can spread the message even further.