Lance, one of our London Eye Care Champions, blogs about the launch of the new Easy Eye Care service in South East London. 

One of our top priorities as an eye care team this year was the launch of a new Easy Eye Care service in South East London. This service provides sight tests to people with learning disabilities and autism of all ages in the boroughs of South East London - Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark. SeeAbility was a part of the working group, along with commissioners, that set up the service. 

I hadn’t realised there was so much involved! We wrote press releases, we designed a flyers for professionals and people with learning disabilities, and we organised a launch event. Have a look through all the resources for the new pathway.

A launch event was held in September at one of the participating opticians practices in Greenwich. We were excited to have Deputy Mayor of Greenwich, Jit Ranabhat and local MP Matthew Pennycook attend, to help us launch the service.  

Since the launch, I have been working hard with my fellow London Eye Care Champion Grace to promote the service. We have presented to organisations both online and in person and have attended a variety of events to meet people with learning disabilities and autism, family carers, support providers and health professionals. We know that we need to work hard to make sure that people in South East London know about Easy Eye Care. 

One of my favourite parts of the role is delivering eye care workshops to groups of people with learning disabilities. We talk about how to look after your eyes and why this matters for everyone. We show people different ways of doing a sight test, like using pictures instead of letters. Everyone seems to love this part of the workshop and they are all keen to join in the demonstration! We encourage people to have a sight test if they haven’t had one yet. 

I also have colleagues Rebecca and Joanne working as Eye Care Champions in North West England, where they are promoting Easy Eye Care. We work closely as a team and will be meeting up soon to celebrate all being in our roles for 5 years! 

I have also met some interesting people on my travels. At an event in Southwark, the local Mayor Michael Situ popped out of a side door, so I took the chance to say hello and have a quick photo. I felt slightly under-dressed compared to his mayoral robes! 

In February, I was lucky enough to visit the Houses of Parliament with Grace and our colleague Donna O’Brien. Donna had arranged for us to meet Marsha de Cordova MP, who is also Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Eye Health and Visual Impairment.  

I also got to meet my own local MP, Dawn Butler. I enjoyed asking her about what she does and telling her about my role. This was my first visit to Parliament and it was great to talk to MP’s about our Equal Right to Sight campaign. They were very interested in our work and very friendly. It was an interesting experience, especially now there is a general election coming up!