BIG Lottery Fund kick-starts new information partially sighted people.
This project will have a big impact on those who have recently been diagnosed with sight loss. It will give immediate and timely advice to people who can become isolated, vulnerable and depressed when they first learn they are losing their sight.
Sight Support, a Welsh sight loss agency, has received funding to pilot a three-year service to get critical information and support to people with sight loss at the earliest opportunity.
Sight Centre Cymru will ensure people - newly certified as blind or partially sighted – are referred to organisations that provide support and advice quickly and effectively.
It will connect people at a vulnerable time in their lives to agencies, clubs and societies, to reduce the risk of depression and isolation.
By speeding what is currently a paper-based process and ensuring referrals get through to the right place, it will enable people to get specialist help and enable them to remain as independent as possible despite their sight loss.
This new service would, uniquely, make use of the electronic transfer of the Certificate of Visual Impairment (CVI) from hospital eye clinics. This will allow timely support to be provided at the moment of greatest need - when individuals are in receipt of devastating news that can impact negatively on their wellbeing, their economic and employment stability, and their self-esteem.
Based on work undertaken by Wales Council for the Blind, the service will be launched in April 2012 and be based in Pontypool. By the end of the three-year Lottery-funded pilot, the service intends to cover the whole of Wales, providing a much-needed service to people with sight loss in Wales.
Project leader Richard Bowers said ‘This a big scheme involving a range of partners in health, social care and the third sector. It’s an exciting and innovative project that will make a huge difference to the delivery of services to blind and partially sighted people throughout Wales. Also, we see this as a model that shall lead the way for other countries in the UK.’
