When being diagnosed with sight loss, it is often essential to be able to access your local sight loss support services quickly. This can be for things like long cane training, to guidance on Personal Independence Payments. We discuss the impacts of delays in accessing these services and the Certificate of Vision Impairment (CVI). If eligible, this certificate can trigger support available from your local authority's sight support team - if it has one. We discuss these themes with a consultant ophthalmologist from Moorfields Eye Hospital, a patient, a rehab officer and an ex-eye clinic liaison officer (ECLO).

Further information: If you do not qualify for a CVI, you don’t need to go through the registration process to get help from your local social services. When you visit an optician, they can provide something called a Low Vision Leaflet (LVL). This contains contact details for sources of information and advice, along with a form that you can send to your local social services to ask for an assessment. Moreover, hospital eye clinic staff can fill in a form called a Referral of Vision Impairment (RVI), which does the same, but also staff are able state how urgently they think you require help, so you do not have to wait until the end of your treatment at the clinic to be referred.

Presenter: Peter White
Producer: Beth Hemmings
Production Coordinator: Liz Poole

Website image description: Peter White sits smiling in the centre of the image, wearing a dark green jumper. Above Peter's head is the BBC logo (three individual white squares house each of the three letters). Bottom centre and overlaying the image are the words "In Touch" and the Radio 4 logo (the word Radio in a bold white font, with the number 4 inside a white circle). The background is a bright mid-blue with two rectangles angled diagonally to the right. Both are behind Peter, one of a darker blue and the other is a lighter blue.