Decisión sobre la idoneidad y suficiencia del importe de la fianza

As mentioned earlier, interviewees had experienced a range of

congenital and acquired sight loss: nine had degenerative conditions, three had experienced a sudden onset of sight loss (two were related to stroke and one followed an eye infection) and three had congenital conditions. In terms of the difficulties they were experiencing at the time of referral, mobility, cooking, shopping, communication, getting on and off the bus and telling the time were key areas that all participants said they had been struggling with. Many people said they relied on family and friends for daily activities such as cooking and shopping.

Most referrals to rehabilitation teams were reported to have been made by hospital staff, after participants had registered as partially or severely sighted. A few people felt they had to be registered in order to have access to rehabilitation support. One person (B2) said he had to ‘make a fuss’ to be registered because the optician in the hospital thought he was making it up to get a bus pass:

‘If I didn’t make the fuss about it, I think I still wouldn’t be registered now. Don’t know how bad you need to be to be registered’ (B2).

While there were no noticeable differences reported between the sites in terms of the gap between the timing of diagnosis and the referral to rehabilitation teams, there were some variations between individuals’ experiences across the sites. The majority of service users with

degenerative conditions reported that they had been referred to the rehabilitation team two to four years (in two cases 20 and 26 years) after they had been diagnosed. The referral was often said to have been prompted by either a rapid deterioration of eye sight or changes in family circumstances, for example the death of a partner/carer (A2). The

general feeling among this group was that they knew they needed help but they did not know who to turn to and what help was available.

Several people reported that the eye clinic had given them some equipment such as magnifiers, a white stick and a pair of glasses but they were not of much help to them. One person who had recently

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moved from another LA said the hospital in the previous LA had given him a long cane but he did not feel safe using it because he had no training to use it properly (A2). Another person reported that the hospital had offered to refer him to the Social Services without telling him what help they would be able to offer:

‘…they were quite vague about it, … they just asked me. I could’ve refused to be … I had the choice to say no, but I did because, you know, ‘cause I knew I would need help with certain stuff’ (B4).

People who had experienced a sudden loss of their eye sight talked about the difficulties they had gone through in coming to terms with their condition – both physically and mentally. One person (C3) summed up how the sudden sight loss had affected him:

‘… you try living your whole life with your eyes shut, it does change everything you have to do … there’s nothing I do now that I did the same way when I could see, you know, regardless of what you do. And…So, you know, it did change my life quite considerably, and for a long time … everything I loved doing, it threw out the window… There was nothing I could continue doing that I used to enjoy doing before… I was in a dark place … physically speaking and metaphorically speaking’ (C3).

Two of the participants (A4 and C3) said that they had to struggle on their own for a few years, with little input from the hospital; all they had been given by the eye clinic was a pair of glasses and a magnifier. One person had found his situation very stressful. He explained that his wife was diabetic and had a mental health problem; he had to regularly monitor her blood to see she needed to have insulin but he wasn’t able to do that anymore. He said the hospital did not offer any help. His wife’s Community Matron searched the internet and found a talking smart

meter to help him with that and put him in touch with the rehabilitation team. He also mentioned that the help he received from his wife’s carer with shopping, writing his cheques for him and reading his letters before rehabilitation support started was invaluable; without it he felt he would have had to move into a care home:

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‘It felt as though I’d be thrown on the scrap heap, that’s how it felt. In fact, I was very resentful of it …I wanted to talk to somebody. I said, some therapy or something, I need to discuss it, … there was nothing… that was the situation for quite some time’ (A4).

Of the three people with congenital conditions, one had his condition recently diagnosed. The other two had moved to the research sites from other LAs and had been getting on and off support from various

rehabilitation services throughout their lives; both reporting that the level and speed of the service they had received in different authorities were hugely different.