Speech pathologists (SP) play a critical role in assessing and managing mealtimes for individuals living with a disability. Following their assessment, recommendations are communicated to support staff who care for those living in disability support accommodations. The implementation of recommendations contributes to residents’ health and wellbeing, while influencing the outcomes of public healthcare systems and national health and disability funding schemes. However, implementation is known to be difficult considering the high turn-over of staff, multiple shift changes, and the varying levels of health care knowledge, skills and experiences possessed by support staff.

We conducted two scoping reviews with the following questions: 1) How do SPs communicate their recommendations about mealtimes to support staff in disability support accommodations? 2) What are the enablers and barriers faced by support staff when implementing these recommendations?

Two complementary scoping reviews were conducted across nine relevant databases. Thirteen peer-reviewed articles were included for question 1, and twenty-four for question 2. Google advanced search was used to identify relevant grey literature, with 13 and 4 documents eligible for data extraction for questions 1 and 2, respectively.

The reviews identified that SPs communicate their recommendations predominantly through the development of written guidelines and provision of education and training. Factors that enabled practice were concrete guidelines, visual reminders, routine follow-ups and supervision from SPs and organisational supervisors and managers, maintaining longitudinal learning needs, multidisciplinary collaboration, supports in managing conflicts between client choice and SP recommendations, and provision of emotional supports. Lack of these negatively influenced practice and were listed as barriers.

These findings encourage the development of specific, standardised and intentional strategies to improve the processes involved during mealtimes using a person-centred approach, while considering the interrelationships of multiple governing systems to improve the quality of care.

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