Posted on: 8 May 2019
At their meeting on Thursday 25 April, members of Havercroft Parent Forum shared their experiences of eye care services with representatives from the Partnership’s Improving Planned Care Programme, and from Wakefield Council’s Public Health Team.
The group discussed the importance of having regular eye tests and agreed that the main reason people don’t have regular eye tests is usually because they think their vision is fine.
It’s a shocking statistic that 50% of all cases of sight loss are preventable. One of the ways we can all help to bring that percentage right down is by having regular eye tests, at least once every two years, and by encouraging others to do the same. Having an eye test could detect an eye condition before you notice any changes in your vision, and it could save your sight.
Tracy Leach, lead officer for the council’s Preventable Sight Loss campaign, introduced the group to the Eyes Right Toolkit. This is a simple tool designed to screen near and distant vision in adults that can be used by anybody.
Group members were happy to carry out the vision screening on each other and found it to be very straightforward and quick to do. In fact, Forum members were so impressed by the Eyes Right Toolkit that they are planning to use it to offer free vision screening at their community event at the end of May 2019.
It’s important to remember that vision screening will not detect all eye conditions and it’s not an alternative to having a full eye examination by an optometrist. What it can do is give a good indication if there is a problem and when the person being screened should go and see an optometrist to get everything checked out.