If you are interested in having home visits just give us a call on 01423 565915 or email enquiries@vshd.org.uk and let us know that you would like to be added to the home visiting service.

If you are already a Vision Support member – You will be directly added to the home visiting service.

If you are not a member of Vision Support – Leave your name, address and telephone number with the office when you call and Sue will bring a membership form with them to help you fill in on your first visit.

You will receive a letter with a date when Sue will visit you. Sue will have a chat with you to find out how you are getting on and if there is anything you are concerned about. Don’t worry if you can’t think of anything, they are well trained and experienced in helping people and identifying any issues you may not have picked up on. Sue can give you lots of tips and information on how to manage your independent living and can help you get in touch with other organisations that can help too. They can show you equipment and aids that may help you tackle some of the tasks that you are finding difficult and can show you how to carry on using your own equipment by introducing identifying markers. I won’t give all their secrets away!

• Lighting
• Preparing food and drinks
• Tactile marking cookers, microwaves, washing machines etc
• Other helpful organisations
• Reading
• Time pieces
• Setting up audio description if available

Yes, if you would like someone to be there during your visit, that is absolutely fine. Sometimes family and friends have questions that they want answering too. Just make sure that you ask the questions that are important to you too.

Home visitors do not bring magnifiers with them to the visits. If you are interested in magnifiers it is best to talk to you GP or Eye Consultant about a referral to the Low Vision Clinic at Harrogate Hospital. The Low Vision Clinic will assess your vision to find out if a magnifier could benefit you. Some people prefer to buy a magnifier and we do have a small range of magnifiers at the Vision Support Centre, however, they can be quite costly, some of our magnifiers are quite fancy and aren’t available at the Hospital. If you wish to discuss this further talk to your home visitor or call the Vision Support Team on 01423 565915.

Our home visitors although very knowledgeable about sight loss and services, they do not know everything about every eye condition, this is why we have another person working for Vision Support called Lauren. Lauren is our Eye Clinic Liaison Officer (ECLO for short) and is very knowledgeable about eye conditions and has lots of useful booklets, and information about various eye conditions. If you would like more information about your eye condition please let your home visitor know and we will help you access that information.

Sometimes an issue you are having can be made easier by a small daily living aid, for example when making a cup of tea you may find it easier to use a liquid level indicator, mark a dial with a bumpon or tell the time with a talking watch/clock, because of these issues our home visitors carry a small selection of daily living aids, they will demonstrate to you how they work, you can buy them but never feel obliged to buy an aid from the home visitors, our charity doesn’t make any profits from the sale of daily living aids so it doesn’t matter to us whether you buy something or not, we just like you to know what helpful gadgets are out there to make life a little easier and we understand that it isn’t easy for the people we home visit to go shopping themselves.