As the new school year begins, Tom Norton, RNIB Education and Children Information and Resources Officer, offers advice for parents of children with vision impairment.
A lot of planning and preparation goes into the return to school after the summer holidays. Children are, hopefully, thinking about friends and favourite lessons while parents are gearing up for the early mornings, bag packing, and school runs. Teachers and other education professionals are also often training and planning for the next year’s lessons.
Given that everyone’s thinking ahead, this can be a great time for revisiting written support plans in whatever format you have them. Taking a look at a child’s provision will help everyone involved in the planning to ensure the appropriate support is in place. You could think about:
· What went well last year?
· What might need changing this year?
· What is the child looking forward to?
Planning specialist provision can take some time, particularly given that children’s needs can change quickly as they develop new skills or start to want different things. The CFVI Resource Hub on RNIB Bookshare helps with building provision for children with vision impairment. It’s a free online hub full of practical tools and guidance that schools, colleges, and professionals can sign up to, giving parents and carers a profile for access from home.
Often, it can help to have the same specialist equipment at home that is in place in school. It’s the responsibility of the school and sensory service to ensure specialist equipment is in place in the education setting, so it’s important to ask a QTVI for their recommendations before buying anything. Based on the QTVI’S recommendations, parents might find things for learning at home on the RNIB shop.
If there are any difficulties affording some of this equipment, there are plenty of grants available, including RNIB’s grant scheme for accessible technology. Details on grants from other organisations are available on our “Financial support for parents” pages.
