World Sight Day is on Thursday, 12 October. Organised by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), the event aims to raise awareness of blindness and visual impairments, whilst also promoting good eye health. The theme of this year’s World Sight Day is “love your eyes at work”.

To celebrate World Sight Day, we want to introduce you to Linda Mitchell, Vision Support Officer at TouchBase Fife, who runs our Vision Support Project.

The Vision Support Project supports individuals with additional support needs and visual impairments and their families and has been doing so for the last ten years. Families are referred to the service from different sources, at which point Linda, who is a trained nurse and midwife, will provide an informal eye health assessment and offer advice based on that assessment, such as recommending a visit to an optician or providing information about the TouchBase’s sensory toy library.

Recently, a two-year-old boy was referred to Linda and the project. Initially, the boy was really struggling with his glasses and was refusing to wear them. After an informal assessment, Linda provided the little boy with a teddy bear with coloured glasses and a book about the importance of wearing glasses. Thanks to these items, the boy now wears his glasses with no issues, and is much more confident in recognising when he needs to wear them. Catherine, a Health Visitor from the NHS, told Linda:

“This has made such a difference to the child and his parents who are most appreciative, as am I. It’s a wonderful service and the loveliness and ease of dealing with yourself makes all the difference.  Thank you so much for your support.  You’ve made a huge difference to this little boy and his parents!”

Find out how else we’ve been celebrating World Sight Day 2023 on our Facebook page.