Key findings

• Our research has suggested four crucial benefits of Meals on Wheels services:

1. They help access a daily meal: The meals require little to no preparation, making it easy for any adult with care and support needs to have a tasty, nutritious meal every day. This could help address malnutrition.
2. They help reduce social isolation: It is usually the same drivers who deliver the meal to a user of the service. This human contact and seeing a familiar face could improve mental wellbeing.
3. They help highlight any concerns: Drivers who deliver the meals can check for safety and wellbeing concerns. This could support users of Meals on Wheels to continue living in their own home for longer.
4. They can promote independence: Receiving Meals on Wheels could prevent or delay the move into residential care. This could substantially reduce costs to social care services and the NHS.

• Despite various perceived referral routes (e.g. via social and support workers, as well as carers employed via social care agencies), family members perceived they were the ones most likely to refer, and set up, Meals on  Wheels for someone. Highlighting the availability of Meals on Wheels services, and their benefits, to general practitioners, hospital discharge teams and social workers and community carers could increase professional referrals to services.
• Several stereotypes surrounding Meals on Wheels were highlighted by participants, including the preconception that the service is solely intended for ‘older people’ or that the food reminds people of ‘school meals’. These preconceptions could prevent Meals on Wheels uptake. In their awareness raising strategies, Meals on Wheels providers could address these stereotypes by highlighting that Meals on Wheels is for any individual who cannot prepare their own meals, irrespective of age, and providing testimonials about the quality of meals on offer, as reported by our research participants.
• Our earlier work exploring the perceptions of Meals on Wheels providers suggested that many people who could benefit from the service do not know that Meals on Wheels exist. Our research suggested that users of the service and their family referrers had generally heard of Meals on Wheels, but that people do not register such information until they actually need to use the service. This lack of service awareness might hinder uptake. Meals on Wheels providers should consider enhancing their publicity activities to ensure wide awareness of the service’s existence, but also awareness of the wider benefits of the service.