Sight Concern Bedfordsire

Sight Concern Bedfordsire

At a glance

Causes

  • Children / families
  • Health and well being / research and care
  • Older people / later life
  • Physical disabilities
  • Training / employment support

Other details

Geographical remit: 
Local

Objectives

SCB provides information, advice and practical support to blind and partially sighted people across Bedfordshire and Luton. Our entire ethos is based on enabling independence so that people living with sight loss can regain and maintain active and independent lives.

Sight Concern offers active support to any person living with untreatable sight loss (whether blind or partially sighted) resident in Bedford, Central Bedfordshire or Luton and to their families and carers.  This includes children, young people, adults and older people.  Although the demography of sight loss means that the majority of our service users are elderly, we also support families with young children, young people in education and people of working age.  

 

In the general population, one in nine people aged 60 or over are living with sight loss and one in four people aged 90 or over.   Of the people registered as blind or partially sighted, around 4% are completely blind, 51% have significant sight loss and 45% partial sight loss.    20% of visually impaired people are of working age but only around 30% of them are in employment.

 

There are an estimated 12,000 people in Beds and Luton who are visually impaired (source: ONS) of whom we are in contact with around 3,500 at any given time.   Many visually impaired people are well cared for and support at home by their partners, friends and families.  We are there to help out when this support is lost or is missing.

 

We also work alongside other agencies and organisations to raise awareness of the impact of sight loss and improve access and opportunities for blind and partially sighted people in Bedfordshire and Luton.   We also network with other sight loss charities to promote new technologies and opportunities.

Activities

We provide information, advice and practical support to our service users which includes:

  • benefits advice and support to apply or appeal;
  • housing benefit advice and support to move house if needed;
  • low vision services including clinical assessment;
  • low vision aids and equipment including magnifiers and assistive technology
  • support to access education and employment; 
  • home visiting and telephone-based emotional support;
  • access to social and leisure activities including social clubs;
  • specialist IT training and support;
  • Talking News (across Luton, Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard) and other audio publications
  • Guiding and training for guiding visually impaired people
  • Family support for visually impaired children

No current opportunities

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