The local government social care ombudsman has found against a local authority's sensory needs service in the way it assessed the needs and provided a service for one of its visually impaired citizens.  The judgement invokes the ADASS guidance on visual impairment rehabilitation and the role of assessment and rehabilitation in the Vision UK's Eye Health and Sight Loss pathway.   This pathway and the ADASS guidance should be seen as the bedrock of ensuing blind and partially sighted people receive the services they need in England.  Read the full judgement here https://www.lgo.org.uk/decisions/adult-care-services/assessment-and-care-plan/18-019-465#point4  

Please see the COVID-19 update on the front page of our website.

This event will not now take place, as originally scheduled, in July.  Our colleagues at BCU and RWPN will be reviewing whether we can organise an alternative way of delivering seminars and the AGM.  We will notify members when we have a workable solution.

The date for the annual seminar at Birmingham City University is Friday 10th July.  Members only (for qualified practitioners) plus managers.  Booking information and costs to follow in due course.

RWPN has now published supervision guidance for Vision Rehabilitation and Habilitation Workers and their managers.  Rehab and Hab workers require technical supervision from qualified workers but often do not receive it.  Lack of appropriate supervision creates risks for our clients, risks for the workers themselves and risks for employers when things go wrong.  This guidance explains why supervision is vital and offers guidance for how it might be put in place.

We are delighted to announce that RWPN's new professional register has now been endorsed by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, Visionary (the representative body for local Vision Impaired Charities and organisations) and Vision UK (the independent partnership organisation working across the eye health and sightloss sector). 

This recognition is significant: ADASS (Association of Directors of Adult Social Services) promotes best practice across local authorities in England so this is a clear directive to managers and commissioners to ensure their staff are on the register, and by doing so, are accountable to service users.  The register went live in January 2019.  It is public and can be viewed on this website.  ADASS' endorsement means that it expects employers of Vision Rehabilitation Workers will understand the benefitss of employing this specialist service and understand its inherent risks. ADASS endorses this register as best practice in ensuring its members workforce is fit for purpose in safeguarding the public.

The UK government has just published its response to its consultation on the future of professional regulation.  RWPN submitted a response to this. Here is the UK government response. 

Promoting_professionalism_reforming_regulation_consultation_reponse.pdf

With respect to the future regulation of Vision Rehabilitation Workers, the government’s response to questions 1 and 2 (pages 13-15) are particularly relevant. And with respect to regulation in the nations with devolved powers, the response to question 17 (page 37) is relevant.  

We note the following: The consultation proposed that the PSA [Professional Standards Authority], working with relevant stakeholders, should take on the role of advising the UK and Devolved Governments on which groups of professionals should be regulated. The UK Governments recognised the link between assessing new groups for regulation with the PSA’s powers to accredit voluntary registers but did not believe this would amount to a conflict of interest. The ultimate decision regarding whether a group should be regulated would remain with Ministers...The UK and Devolved Governments believe that the PSA is best placed to provide independent advice on which groups of healthcare professionals should be regulated”.  We feel that this re-enforces RWPN’s decision to seek PSA accreditation for its current register.

We also note that the response proposed a much greater evidence-based approach to deciding which professional groups require regulatory oversight, and we think this is right and that the process will highlight the professional risks involved in vision rehabilitation. Response 5.16 states: The UK and Devolved Governments believe that a single, robust and evidence based methodology for assessing new groups would be beneficial. We appreciate the complexity in developing such a methodology. We expect the PSA to continue to review and refine its model to ensure the advice it provides is robust, transparent and evidence based.

There is still an enormous amount of work to be done by RWPN to achieve accredited status for its register, but we are clearly on the right track to protect the blind and partially sighted people who use our services.

Promoting a right to rehab.pdf

Lore Thaler from Durham University organised the very well-received echolocation training across various parts of the country last year.  She has written a report documenting the findings of the work, including all feedback from those who attended.  

The report can be read here....

http://community.dur.ac.uk/echolocation/workshops.html

It is vital that employers, commissioners and workers have a clear understanding of the risks associated with practice.  Vision Rehabilitation is focused on enabling people who are losing (or have lost) their sight to do things they used to do with sight and some of these are intrinsically risky.  Poor practice, or practice undertaken by an unqualified worker (where they are untrained for a specific task) creates avoidable risk. As a requirement of any future application to join the list of approved professional registers endorsed by the Professional Standards Authority, RWPN has drafted an assessment of the risks associated with the tasks that Vision Rehabilitation Workers do.  Assessment of Professional Risk   The final page of the document provides a matrix for understanding the documented risks.

If you have any views or comments to make please contact RWPN by 31st March 2019.