listening and responding to people affected by sight loss in the west of Scotland for over 150 years Welcome to our Summer 2009 Newsletter In this edition you will find news about changes to some of our services, details of the Community Support Teams plans for the months ahead, an update on some of the events we have been running in our 150th anniversary year and some new ways you can help us to raise funds. There is also an update on who is currently on our board and information regarding why we are looking for new people to join. Visibility Launches Home Money Box Scheme Since Visibility was born in 1859 we have relied on donations to continue, and develop, our work. Every gift we receive, large or small, makes a real difference to our ability to carry on delivering life changing support. We are always looking for new ways for people to support us and at the end of June we launched our home money box scheme. By saving your small change for Visibility you really can make a big difference! How does it work? We thought that these small boxes would be an ideal way for people to support us easily and conveniently in their own homes and, if lots of people saved their coppers, together they would soon grow into a significant amount to help our services carry on. Every few months we will remind people by letter, email or tape to empty their boxes and send a cheque or postal order to Visibility or hand the cash into us and we will count it for you. Also, if you are a tax payer your donation can be worth significantly more if you ‘gift aid’ it by signing a short declaration. We have been absolutely delighted by your response, in the first two weeks an incredible 61 people took boxes, with more going out every day. A huge THANK YOU to those of you who have become box holders, some people have even filled their box already and are now busy filling it up again! A big thank you also to those of you who could not take a box but sent a donation instead - we really appreciate your support. In keeping with our 150th birthday theme this year, we would love to have 150 home money box holders by the end of the year. If you can help us reach our target by taking a box please do get in touch with Susan, Jenny or Audrey in the Fundraising Team, we would love to hear from you. Charity Awards Update Back in June Visibility’s New View project was on the shortlist for a prestigious charity award, so Valerie Breck and David Logan put on their posh togs and went down to London to attend the awards dinner. Sadly we did not win, but it was a great chance to increase awareness of the eccentric reading technique and the work of Visibility. Since then we have submitted applications to two other awards schemes. We have nominated our New View work for a Macular Disease Society Excellence Award and the Sealladh project for a Military and Civilian Health Partnership Award. We are waiting with baited breath and all our fingers crossed! PC Plum on the Run PC Plum from the BBC children’s show Balamory popped into our offices recently. The PC, otherwise known as actor Andrew Agnew, is helping us in our quest to get 150 people signed up for this year’s Great Scottish Run on 6th September. He met with some of our signed up runners including Holly Small aged 9 who is our youngest runner, and Ronnie Anderson aged 76 our eldest. Some of you may know Ronnie who recently retired form the Board of Visibility. You may not be aware though that Ronnie is a keen runner and took part in the first Glasgow Marathon way back in 1982. Holly is just starting out on her running career but is already showing real talent. She will certainly be very near the top in her age group at the Great Scottish Run and might even be the fastest on the day. We are all keeping our fingers crossed for her to do well. You do not have to be a runner to join us at the great Scottish Run though. We have lots of people signed up who will be walking the route. We are also not asking you to raise a lot of sponsorship money – just whatever you can manage. Our dream is to get 150 people taking part to mark our 150th birthday. We have just under 100 signed up so still have a bit to go and time is ticking on. So please, if you are not busy on the 6th September and fancy a 10km walk, jog or run give us a call on 0141 332 4632. A Blooming Summer for Visibility Visibility has gone flower crazy this summer with not one but two tribute flower beds created to celebrate our 150th year. Glasgow Council gardeners have created a flower bed in the walled garden at King’s Park, on the south side of Glasgow, and over in Inverclyde the council has installed a similar floral tribute next to Port Glasgow’s war memorial. The beds feature the Visibility eye logo and our charity name and make eye catching displays for passers by. The flower bed in Kings Park gave us a wonderful reason to stage a birthday event, so on Friday 19th June we invited children with visual impairments from two local schools, Darnley and Hazelwood, to a picnic in the park. Before tucking into sandwiches and cake the children took part in several activities organised by Glasgow City Council’s community team. The children were able to handle a range of exotic animals from the Queen’s Park greenhouses, including snakes, lizards and a tortoise, and learn about their habitats and diet. In keeping with the flower theme the children also made fresh flower posies to take home, and had a chance to smell and touch a variety of herbs and find out more about growing edible plants. B & Q Darnley and Suttons Seeds donated packets of cress seeds so the children could have a go at growing their own food when they got back to school. It was an action packed morning and everyone was ready for their picnic which we managed to eat outside as the threatening rain stayed away. Then, with what was literally the ‘icing on the cake’ Fiona Sandford, Chief Executive, cut the 150th birthday cake that had been donated by Greggs the Bakers. It was not long before the cake was nothing more than a few crumbs as our young guests tucked in. Everyone had such a great time at the picnic that we have decided to do it all again next year. Cycle Countdown It is now less than a month to go before our two intrepid cyclists, Kerrie and Paul, set off from London on their tandem bike. Their destination is Paris and they are aiming to get there in just 3 days. This will require them to cycle nearly 100 miles every day. Phew! The duo has been training hard for their epic journey and Para Olympian cyclist and Visibility Ambassador Aileen McGlynn has been on hand to give them a few pointers and words of encouragement. As well as training the pair has also been hard at work raising sponsorship. Their target was £3,000 and they have managed to smash that and are now at £3,035 but still looking for more. You can support them and make a donation through their Just Giving page at http://www.justgiving.com/paulandkerrie/. Paul and Kerrie will travel down to London on September 1st ready to begin the cycle at 7am the following morning. We hope to carry live updates and photos on the Visibility website, assuming they are able to text or email at the end of each grueling day. Paul says “We can’t believe the time has nearly come to do this trip as it only seems like yesterday that we decided to do it.  We were mostly worried at the beginning that we wouldn’t manage to raise such a large sum for Visibility, now we are more worried that we can actually complete this challenge!!!  Everyone has been very supportive and we would both like to thank everyone who has sponsored us to achieve our target.  See you all on our return.” Pat Martin – Welfare Rights This summer we said goodbye to a colleague and friend when the Welfare Rights funding ended, the service closed and Pat Martin left Visibility. Pat has worked with Visibility for 14 years and many of you will know her through her welfare rights advice and support. Her knowledge of welfare rights and visual impairment was amazing and she was totally committed to ensuring that everyone got the benefits they were entitled to. Over the years with Visibility, Pat maximised the income of many people by millions of pounds in total. As Welfare Rights Co-ordinator, Pat was extremely busy, but still always had time to give advice, provide a service or point people in the right direction. She was happy to go along to groups and update people on changes or advise them of their rights and faithfully provided an outreach clinic at the Centre for Sensory Impaired People. She often joked that she knew she had been in the business a long time, when the young children she had worked with in the past, started contacting her for independent advice. Pat will of course be greatly missed by all of us at Visibility and we wish her well as she pursues new interests and areas of work. COMMUNITY SUPPORT TEAM The Community Support Team has undergone some changes recently and we would like to introduce you to some new members of our team. We are delighted to be joined by Alex Campbell, Audrey Ward and Rae McDonald who will be available to answer your information enquiries and delighted to meet with you at our events. Alex, Audrey and Rae have joined the team following our own Paul McArthur being offered the opportunity to work, for a 2 year period, on secondment with the Glasgow Sensory Impairment Team to deliver an Early Notification Project. This will enable Paul to support people with sight loss prior to registration as blind or partially sighted. Visible Communities Work We have just recently completed our first year of the Visible Communities work and have been delighted with the way the project has developed. We would like to thank all the people who came to visit with us in Argyll & Bute and West Dunbartonshire and all the organisations who supported us in taking this work forward either by attending events or attending our awareness training to increase their knowledge. During its second year the project will focus on East Renfrewshire, East Dunbartonshire and Inverclyde as part of Visibility’s Big Lottery funded Visible Communities work. Information Sessions within the Community These sessions are available to visually impaired people and friends and family members where you are welcome to “drop in” during a 2 hour information session to meet with other visually impaired people in the area and some local support services. A range of aids and equipment which, encourage independent living, will be on display for you to try and information about a range of local support and services will also be available. Family members and friends will also be given the opportunity to try simulation glasses to help increase their understanding of eye conditions. If you would like to add your name to our mailing list to be kept informed of upcoming information sessions with these three areas, please call the Community Support Team on 0141 332 4632 and we will be delighted to discuss the sessions further. As a new development, the team aim to offer family members who provide support to a visually impaired relatives or friend the opportunity to attend an information sharing and awareness raising workshop in each of the three local authority areas. If this is of interest, again please do not hesitate to contact the team for further information. Visual Impairment Awareness Training FREE training will be offered to organisations, community representatives, volunteers and services throughout East Renfrewshire, East Dunbartonshire and Inverclyde. The training will consist of a two and a half hour session which will provide people attending with the opportunity to update their knowledge and share their good practice with others. Training will cover topics such as understanding eye conditions, the importance of good communication, the DDA, guiding, examples of aids and equipment which aid independent living and information on support services available locally. Attendees will also be given the opportunity to try interactive activities using simulation glasses which simulated the most common eye conditions such as Macular Degeneration, Glaucoma, Diabetic Retinopathy and Cataracts. Group training could also be arranged for organisations and we would be happy to discuss this with you if this would be of interest. If you would like to find out more about the FREE training available, please contact the Community Support Team on 0141 332 4632. Children & Families Project This year sees the start of a new area of work for Visibility with the development of a Children & Families Project. We hope to build on the previous work of the Go! project and provide opportunities for the young people to try out activities and have fun and provide something for the parents. We feel that parents are also important and hope to run some information sessions and give parents the opportunity to meet up. We hope to run two information sessions in the autumn/winter. One will be aimed at parents of pre-school children and one for parents of children leaving secondary school. Once the details have been finalised, we will advertise these on our web site. If you would be interested in knowing more or becoming involved, please contact us on 0141 332 4632. Our Board We thought you might be interested in finding out about the people who make up our Board of Directors. They all give up their own time to ensure that the organisation operates in accordance with our governance documents, legislation and the pursuance of worthwhile objectives. We are currently looking for new members to join our board. If you are interested please call Fiona Sandford on 0141 332 4632. Liz Anderson - Board Member since June 2001 /Current Chair. Liz who has albinism has been visually impaired all her life. She trained as a physiotherapist at the RNIB School of Physiotherapy in London. She had an interesting and varied career working in hospitals in London, Holland and Canada. Since retiring she has been very involved with the work of Visibility and is committed to promoting independence for visually impaired people. Liz is a Quaker and actively involved in the Glasgow Quaker Meeting and the work of the Society locally and nationally. Gordon Brown – Board Member since October 2005 Gordon comes from an academic background of Business Administration and Management, he is a member of Chartered Accountants of Scotland. He Joined IBM at Greenock in 1978 as an accountant and was promoted through the ranks holding various senior management roles, including Financial Controller, at IBM Greenock. Before retiring in 2005, he was Director of Business Operations for the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and South Africa.   Willie Renfrew Board Member since June 2002 Willie was an engineer for Babcocks in Renfrewshire for 36 years before he retired at the age of 52 due to his deteriorating eyesight. Willie has had a long involvement with the British Retinitis Pigmentation Association – now known as ‘fighting blindness’ and until a few years ago was the Chairman for the west of Scotland branch. Willie has also been involved with the Guide Dogs Association and is a member of the Paisley Branch. He is also a member of Paisley Blind Forum and the Renfrew Blind Club. Gordon Dutton - Board Member since February 2004 Professor Gordon Dutton is a consultant paediatric ophthalmologist at Yorkhill hospital. He holds a chair with Glasgow Caledonian University where he works for one day a week, and he is an Honorary Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Glasgow. Gordon has contributed extensively to the New View project and is an author on a number of papers on visual disability due to damage to the eyes or the brain in children and adults. He is also on the Parent Council of the new Hazelwood School for visually impaired children in Glasgow and helped to set up the organisation VIScotland, which is a national service based in Edinburgh, which provides information and assistance to children in Scotland with visual impairment. Jim Morris - Board Member since February 2005 Jim Morris joined the Board at the beginning of 2005 after a career of 32 years in stock broking and investment management. During his stock broking days Jim acted   as Visibility’s Fund Manager and Investment Adviser so his association with Visibility goes back many years. Jim now chairs the Finance Committee. Liz McClure - Board Member since June 2005 Liz has been a Visibility Board member since the summer of 2005.   Throughout her professional career as an Optometrist she worked in the Hospital Eye Service first in Glasgow Eye Infirmary, then in the Western Infirmary, the Tennent Institute and  laterly in Gartnavel General Hospital. Although she no longer work with patients she has continued with examinations and postgraduate assessment work for the College of Optometrists. This takes her to London several times in the year and has allowed her to use the spare hours there to visit theatres and galleries. Liz is a long time member of Soroptimist International --- a women's service group--- and has enjoyed meeting many remarkable women from all over the world. Ian MacConnacher - Board Member since October 2006 Ian ran his own construction company for many years before his retirement and he has had a great deal of involvement with the Trades House of Glasgow. Ian is a serious music lover, who travels the world to hear great orchestras and opera companies in their own countries. He is also a keen caravanner and golfer. Hugh Hopkins - Board Member since December 2008 Hugh worked as a partner in legal practice for 27 years, until his retirement in 2007, during this time he also lectured part time at Glasgow University, later working as an external examiner for them and also for Dundee University. During the 1970’s Hugh sat on the Scottish Council for the ‘Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind’, who are now known as ‘Sight Savers’. He was also on the executive committee for them and was chairman of the Scottish branch for three years. Hugh was diagnosed with Glaucoma in 2005 and more recently with Dry AMD. Judith Marshall – Board Member since February 2005 Judith has been visually impaired for over 30 years and during that time has had a long involvement with Visibility. Judith is the secretary of ORB – the Organisation of Recreational clubs for the Blind and organises many social activities. Judith was chairman of the British Blind Sports Bowls Committee for two years and has been on the committee of the Scottish Association for Blind Bowlers for some time. Action for Blind People’s information bus visit to East Renfrewshire. The Action for Blind People’s Information Bus will be visiting East Renfrewshire this September. Those of you who have visited the bus in the past will know how informative it is and Visibility staff will be on hand to answer your questions. The dates and locations of the information bus are as follows. Tuesday 8th September St John’s Church, Aurs Road, Barrhead, G78 2RW Wednesday 9th September Morrison’s Supermarket, 38 Fenwick Road, Giffnock, G46 6AA Thursday 10th September Car Park at the Mineral Station Yard, Near the Clarkston Halls and Library, Clarkston, G76 8NE Self Directed Support in Scotland RNIB Scotland has produced an information leaflet on the Scottish government’s ‘Self Directed Support’ initiative. Many people with sight loss who have assessed care needs receive care and support services, usually arranged by their local authority’s social work department. Self Directed Support (SDS), allows you to directly buy in the services you need yourself, choosing what to buy and how much to spend.  You can even choose to buy in some services yourself while asking your local social work department to provide other services. But it’s your choice.  You can still opt for your local social work department to manage all of these services on your behalf. What can I use Self Directed Support for? You can use the funds for things like: • Respite breaks at locations of your choice • For someone to provide care and support to you in any setting • Support for you at your place of work • Support for you in further education • Purchase of equipment and adaptations You can choose to buy these services from your local authority or from other providers, or from a mix of both.  However, your Self-Directed Support payment should be enough to buy services of an equivalent standard to those provided by your local authority. You may also be asked to provide confirmation of how you have used the funds. Your payment is funded from local authority budgets, but it may also include other funding such as the Independent Living Fund, Access to Work, and money you receive from your health board. Self-Directed Support does not affect any other state benefits that you may be receiving. Further Information ‘Directing Your Own Support: A User’s Guide to Self-Directed Support in Scotland’ is published by the Scottish Government.  You can also visit their website - www.selfdirectedsupportscotland.org.uk Information is also available in audio and braille from RNIB Scotland (contact 0131 652 3140). New Co-ordinator for Go From the beginning of October the Go! Project will have a new co-ordinator. Rosemary Cameron, who has worked with Visibility for more than 4 years as volunteer Co-ordinator and Lanarkshire Low Vision Co-ordinator, will be working with Sarah McAllister. The groups and the monthly walks will continue to be run but we will also be working within other local authority areas to support people to access activities locally. We will also be recruiting volunteers in other areas to support these activities and look forward to taking Go into other areas. If you would like to know more about the project please contact Rosemary Cameron on 0141 332 4632. Go Class Programme - 6 September to 11 December Sundays - Guitar 2pm – 3:30pm £3 Mondays - Creative Writing 10am – 12pm £3 Singing 11am – 12:30pm £3 Yoga 2pm – 3:30pm £3 Tuesdays - Guitar and Banjo 10:30am – 12:30pm £3 Wednesdays - Arts and Crafts10:30am – 12:30pm £3 Thursdays - Keyboard 10am – 12pm £3 - Keyboard 12pm – 2pm £3 Fridays - Braille 10am – 12pm £2 3rd Saturday of month- Walking group 10am – 3pm £5 Following requests from the group for more strenuous walks, the walk on the 19th September will be from Strathyre to Callender. This is a 9 mile walk on a good path which goes through forests and along the side of a loch before reaching the town. The Guiding Light - By Alan Graham 1.5C!, See Well! You are 150 years gone but, Still here doing good to others By collecting money for research And Activities for clients You ask us to GO but I wonder How many do GO? How many take the chance of, Changing their lives? Becoming “Whole People”? Instead of being “Half Folk”? I also wonder if you? If others? Know just how great, is the feeling of Being told to GO and being enabled to GO? What a project Grown to a greater size than Was ever expected So Keep GOing GO! Keep Going VISIBILITY Providing light in the darkness Providing pleasure and leisure To all who are looking for Visibility LIGHT!, SIGHT! Whether “Inner” or “Outer” Well, Well 150 years! You don’t look it! But keep making things visible! “Visibility” Be our Guiding Light.