PLYMOUTH City Council has set up a separate low vision group to deal specifically with issues relating to people with sight loss.

The group has deliberately been kept separate to ensure that visual impairment issues do not get lost in wider disability-related issues.

Plymouth’s highlights:

As soon as a person is diagnosed staff at the Royal Eye Infirmary send over the paperwork to the council.

Council rehab officer Kelly Hollingworth said: “The certificate comes in, they have the conversation and the referral is made and we make contact with the person that day. There is no waiting list.

“I will go and visit the person and look at what support they need to meet their outcomes.”

Vicky Brotherton, nurse manager at the Royal Eye Infirmary, said: “Before our patients have seen the doctor and got shocking news they know there is going to be someone there looking out for them. They have already put a face to a person.

“When you’ve been given bad news you don’t want to then have to get to know someone. But if you have already met them you know what to expect. Now there is a seamless service.”

The post of low vision worker has been funded initially for two years.

The council commissions the Plymouth Guild to run six-week courses for people to help them adjust to living with sight loss, including help with using a white cane for the first time.

“It’s really good for people to meet other people in a similar position,” Kelly Hollingworth said.

“There are such knock-on social implications to going blind. I often find that although people have got a wife, husband or parent and as hard as that person tries it’s not the same as talking to someone else who is going through the same thing.”

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