The Society aims to support visually impaired people who live within Barrow-in-Furness and the surrounding area.
To achieve this, the charity:
The Society is a registered charity (No 1051674) and a limited company (No 3133015). Ostley House is also scrutinised 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:
The Society currently employs 66 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.
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.
In the summer of 2018 we carried out a full user consultation and received fantastic feedback from nearly half those we support. This feedback provided the foundations to help us formulate our plans for the next few years.
In brief, we now have a number of projects, including:
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.
