Identifying sight loss – Creating opportunity; Evaluation of the impact of Vision Champion training across Avenues South East.
Avenues mission is to challenge and overcome the disadvantages people face through illness, injury and disability. Our vision is that everyone has the opportunity to be an active citizen in their local community. Avenues is always striving to find ways of enabling these things to happen, Avenues has always looked at working collaboratively with other specialists, to ensure that people have better success in building a great quality of life for themselves, with the right support.
“Training was great fun, lots of activities and very informative”
Delegate
With funding support from Health Education England, through their Intellectual disability program, Avenues were able to work with Royal National Institution of Blind People (RNIB), to jointly deliver Vision Champions Training, with an added emphasis on Positive Behaviour Support. It was important to Avenues that all aspects of a persons life is supported well and ensuring staff have the skills needed to support people well. The two day training was delivered by Sarah Kean (practice development lead for Avenues), and Iain Kennedy (UK training manager for RNIB), and aimed to give people insight into sight loss, key health issues, visually related behaviours, as well as practical activities that simulated sight loss and the difficulty people may face.
‘Adults with Learning Disabilities are 10 times more likely to have significant sight loss’
Each delegate was also given a Vision Champions Toolkit for them to use with their colleagues to support each person that they work for, to develop a vision passport. As a result of using these tool kits, staff have been able to support people differently, which has meant that some of the people we support have accessed primary health services more appropriately, and peoples environments have been changed to ensure they are more conducive to a persons needs.
‘Before changing the wall paper to a plain background, he would spend most of the time pacing, head down, not engaging. Now he sits and watches the television smiling’
Delegate
Other resources were developed during the bridge to vision project, including an induction work book for all staff across the organisation, top tip cards and posters for information, all to support the sustainability of the work done through the project.
A full organisational evaluation of the project is available, showing the impact the training has had on staffs knowledge and confidence in supporting people with learning disabilities complex needs and sight loss. The evaluation also highlights the key outcomes that have come out of the training so far for the people we support.
Click here to download the report, easy read summary and project material
For further details about the project contact:
| Avenues Tel: 02035350500 Ask for Practice development and assurance department Email: info@avenuesgroup.org.uk The Avenues Trust Group, River House, 1 Maidstone Road, Sidcup, Kent. DA14 5TA | RNIB Iain Kennedy UK Training and Development Manager Tel: 0141 772 5588 Email: learningdisability@rnib.org.uk |
Workforce Development for & with People with Intellectual Disabilities 