Develop and Share Award 2024

Beacon Centre for the Blind

Our Sharing the Vision programme helps people to live well with sight loss by bringing together all the professionals who support them.

We teamed up with local councils, ECLOs, and ROVIs to create a platform where we could swap information, share updates on services, and spot any overlaps or challenges. We also wanted to highlight what’s working well so others can learn from it.

Our goal was simple: to make sure people with sight loss get access to better services, whether that’s through a ROVI or our own charity.

Since we started, we’ve seen big improvements in how we support people. For example:

• We’ve set up a staff shadowing scheme between Beacon and Dudley ROVIs, which has really boosted how we work and help each other and increased referrals as well. Now, we’re planning to expand this into other areas.
• We’ve launched a new VIP community group at a council disability hub, which has helped us reach out to people on the local sight loss register and enabled us to reach a younger demographic.
• We’ve made hospital admissions smoother by teaming up with hospital ECLOs. They work with ward staff to make sure patients with sight loss get the right support on wards.

This programme shows how powerful teamwork can be in helping blind and partially sighted people. It’s made life better for nearly 20,000 people living with sight loss in Wolverhampton and Dudley, and it’s made things easier for their families and carers too.

Nystagmus Network

The Nystagmus Care Pathway or NCP is the Nystagmus Network’s proudest achievement to date, because we listened to members of the nystagmus community and worked together with clinicians and researchers to make a difference for families.

Now that the NCP has been adopted, parents and carers of young children and babies facing a diagnosis of nystagmus anywhere in the country will no longer face the stress and worry of rafts of unnecessary testing, or the need to travel miles from their home and then wait for results which may well turn out to be inconclusive.

Instead their children’s eye movements can be properly and thoroughly investigated. They will be kept informed on which tests are needed and why. At the same time, they will be given information on support services and providers who can help them come to terms with having a child with impaired vision and look forward to a future where their child will be able to thrive.

Open Sight Hampshire

Southampton Hospital Eye Unit Sight Loss Support Service

Over 300 adult patients a year are registered as either sight impaired (SI) or severely sight impaired (SSI) at this busy eye unit.  Following loss of the dedicated support for these patients in 2019, a joint initiative between the NHS, local sight loss charities and local authority social services, has re-imagined the support, rehabilitation and empowerment of patients living with visual impairments.

Initial study of patients and staff to understand barriers to supporting patients led to the design of a sight loss advisor (SLA) course and sight loss awareness training for all staff with all the above stakeholders contributing to the content of the course.  There are now over 5 embedded sight loss advisors including, satellite eye clinics, paediatric ophthalmology and neurology.

Southampton Sight lead the project along with University Hospital Southampton Eye Unit, and OpenSight. A stakeholder group meets on a quarterly basis to review the service delivery and measure its success.

The outcomes for the referrals coming from the SLA service include:

• • 91 eeferrals received
  • Of which 62% were new to Open Sight
  • The age range for these referrals were 22yrs to 96yrs
  • 56% were female and 38% were male