The Beat – A Patient Podcast: Starting to tube feed from a parent’s perspective

The Beat - A Patient Podcast series is for people living with tube feeding and is brought to you by Nutricia. This information is intended for people who are tube feeding at home, their families, and their carers, including those registered with Nutricia Homeward, and also their healthcare professionals. 

There are over 30,000 adults and children across the UK, registered with Nutricia Homeward who are tube feeding at home.In this special series of The Beat podcast, we have been interviewing people who are tube feeding, their parents, carers, Dietitians and other healthcare professionals to help our listeners gain a deeper understanding of tube feeding at home. 

In this episode our host Helen Hynes, a Dietitian specialising in Home Enteral Nutrition (HEN) and a member of the British Dietetic Association (BDA), speaks with two parents whose children have experienced tube feeding. Lucy, whose son Josh has a terminal illness which results in swallowing difficulties, and Billie-Jo, whose daughter Niamh is tube fed. Together, Helen, Lucy and Billie-Jo highlight the key information that they needed to know at the very beginning, how to work with schools to support children who are tube fed, and how to talk to a child and other family members about tube feeding.