As CEO of Southampton Sight, I am really proud that our charity has become financially stable as well as being able to innovate to provide essential services to improve lives of people living with sight loss.
Over the last 6 years we have managed to secure the future of the building by making sure we have undertaken essential maintenance as well as increasing the car parking provision which has meant we can increase services at the centre. We are now a recognised community hub for people living with sight loss in Southampton as we share our premises with Southampton City Council Sensory Services and the NHS low vision clinics. We continue to run plenty of social groups and provide much needed information and advice for people living with sight loss. We do all of this with no statutory funding!
When I came to Southampton Sight in 2016 the one thing that came up time and time again was that people living with sight loss seldom knew where to go once they left the eye hospital. We have been working hard to tackle this and have developed a programme with the hospital and local authority to train Sight Loss Nursing Advisors based in the eye unit who are able to support patients to access services within their communities. We have trained five nurses to date, and we are getting extremely positive feedback about these new roles in the hospital. This flagship project is now an integral part of our ongoing work.
That is why it is so important for charities to be financially stable. When charities are operating hand-to-mouth, with no capacity to look further than a few years into the future, it’s no surprise that so few can try out something new. So here at Southampton Sight we have been extremely lucky to be able to have the funding, space, and time, to try out this new project at the hospital. We could not have done this without the generous support from you our members, local businesses, legacies, and the national lottery.
So, my message to you all is thank you and let’s make sure next year is our strongest year ever!
Jackie Powers
