If you are interested in having a home visit just give us a call on 01423 565915 or email enquiries@vshd.org.uk, you will be directed to our outreach Vision Support Advisor Sue Richards who will have a chat with you and arrange a suitable time and date.

The purpose of the home visit is to make sure that you have all the information you need as if you had come along to one of our ‘new to sight loss’ sessions.

You will receive a phone call from Sue, who will arrange a suitable time and date to visit you. When visiting 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 to identify any issues you may not have picked up on yourself. 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!

The home visit doesn’t need to be the end of the support we give you, depending on what you discuss together depends on what outcomes and goals you set for yourself. It maybe that you feel you need someone to talk to that understands what it is like to live with sight loss, some of our existing members are telephone befrienders and will be happy to call you regularly and offer some emotional support and advice. There are many ways in which we can help including referring you to statutory organisations for needs, mobility, finance assessments, there are other highly qualified members of our team that you may be signposted to also.

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 your 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.

If you would prefer to purchase your own handheld or electronic magnifier, we regularly hold demonstration days at the Vision Support Centre. We can also advice you on companies who sell these products.

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 Helen. Helen 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. We can also provide you with the information you need to order catalogues from the suppliers we use. We always advise our members to ask us if a product is beneficial before purchasing as we have gained a lot of knowledge of products over the past 104 years and we wouldn’t want you to buy something that isn’t suitable.