Guide: Supporting children with vision and sensory impairment

• Introduction
• How we can help
• Can my child get support from the ROVIC Service?
• Request an assessment
• The assessment process
• Certificate of Vison Impairment explained
• A Certificate of Vision Impairment has been issued - what happens next?
• A Certificate of Vision Impairment - benefits and concessions
• Deafblind policy guidance
• Other services and charities
• Lending libraries - audio, braille, large print and tactile books
• Additional resources for vision impairment
• Additional resources for hearing impairment
• Additional resources for early years
• Additional resources for safeguarding
• Additional resources for transition
• Contact the ROVIC Service

The assessment process

When a request for service has been been accepted, we will contact you (as parent/carers) to start the assessment process.

To help us understand your child’s needs, we will get to know you and your child. This will include observing your child and areas of difficulty.

We’ll also discuss concerns and progress during our assessment.

We will work with you, your child and, wherever possible and appropriate, other professionals to gather information to help us understand and identify your child’s visual or dual sensory / deafblind needs, and whether habilitation and rehabilitation could support them.

With your permission, and in order to fully see the benefits of working together, we will work with other professional teams across health, education and social care.

We will identify the training recommended to support your child’s independence and learning of life skills.

The ROVIC Service will agree a targeted training programme with you and your child, we call these SMART goals, these can take place in settings such as education, home and within the community.

At the end of a training programme, we often recommend a time of ‘consolidation’. This means a time to practice and perfect those newly learnt skills.

We also know that throughout childhood the need for independence and inclusion can change. Therefore, we will support the development of childhood and transition skills based on your child’s visual needs.