The Society aims to support visually impaired people who live within Barrow-in-Furness and the surrounding area.

To achieve this, the charity:

Helps visually impaired people of all ages to live independently;
Provides information and advice to visually impaired people and to their families and carers;
Provides visually impaired people with a range of welfare support and social activities;
Promotes awareness of sight loss issues to encourage inclusion within our community;
Provides continual care to visually impaired people within our residential home.

Our People

The Society is a registered charity (No 1051674) and a limited company (No 3133015). Ostley House is inspected by the Care Quality Commission.

We therefore have to follow strict rules on how we run ourselves, care for people and use our funds. Our Board of Directors provides effective governance for the organisation and ensures the strategic direction and planning of the charity is successful.

The Board of Directors currently has the following trustees:

Mr C Anderson (Chair)
Mr D Cannell (Vice-Chair)
Mrs W Robinson (Finance Director)
Mr A Todd
Mr G Postlethwaite
Ms M Reynolds
Dr G Jolliffe
Mr A Treharne
Mrs L Coleman
Mr P Laing

The Society currently employs 70 members of staff and is supported by 20 volunteers.

Normally, at least one third of the members of the Board of Directors are visually impaired people and as volunteers have a range of professional skills. The Board of Directors meets 10 times a year.

Reporting to the Board of Directors is the Chief Executive, Mr Carl Hodge. The Chief Executive has delegated operational responsibility from the Board for the day-to-day running of the organisation. He is supported by a senior management team.

The team comprises; Mrs Helen Silver who is the Registered Manager of our residential home, Ostley House; Mrs Maggie Nelson our Vision Support Team Leader; and Mrs Elaine Rollinson who is our Office Manager.

Plans for the Future

Across our area, it is estimated that there are around 1,200 people living with sight loss and this number is set to increase.

Our Society is currently in touch with 810 visually impaired people. Our plans therefore are focused on providing excellent services for the people we already support and also reaching out to the others we have not been in contact yet.

Our philosophy is that visually impaired people should be centrally involved in the review, design and development of the services we offer. To ensure this we hold full consultations with our members and hold focus groups on a regular basis to ensure what we provide is what is needed.

And we can’t do everything ourselves so we will be sharing experience/ideas and gaining support from others including local organisations and national sight loss charities.

In brief, we now have a number of projects, including:

We aspire to maintain and increase the number of home visits provided by our Sight Loss Team

We aspire to increase the number of social and adventurous activity opportunities for visually impaired people in our area

We will continue to be a Society that does everything it can to support our members. To do this we rely on a team of staff and volunteers. We hope to develop more volunteering opportunities that will provide rewarding experiences and help support our work.

And we can’t do everything ourselves so we will be sharing experience/ideas and gaining support from others including local organisations and national sight loss charities.

The future looks exciting and we are ready to seize all opportunities.

Partners

The Society works closely with its partners to offer local people with sight loss a wide range of quality services and opportunities.

We supply information and contact details to a number of sight loss charities and public sector organisations which all support visually impaired people. Please get in touch with us for more details.

Local

Furness General Hospital which is part of the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust.
Cumbria County Council – Adult Social Care Sensory Impairment Team and Children’s Services.
Cumbria CVS (Cumbria Council for Voluntary Service) which offers help, advice, training and support to third sector groups throughout Cumbria.

National

Visionary – Linking local sight loss charities in the UK.
Macular Disease Society.
RP Fighting Blindness.
RNIB.
British Wireless for the Blind.
Guide Dogs.
Thomas Pocklington Trust.
Blind Veterans.