Rehabilitation

 

Your Community Resource Worker will work with you to create a Support Plan, where you can set goals around specific areas of difficulty for you. Rehabilitation through training and therapy can mean that the barriers to engaging in meaningful activity are reduced or removed, enabling you to get back to doing the activities that you want and need to do.

Your CRW can assist with rehabilitation after sight loss under three important areas of day-to-day function: Self-Care, Leisure and Productivity.

  • Self-Care: activities of daily living such as washing, dressing, and functional mobility
  • Leisure: a person’s interests and what they enjoy doing
  • Productivity: activities such as employment, home management, and meal preparation

A blind man being guided how to cut carrots.Sight loss can be a traumatic change in a person’s life. By focusing on returning to the activities that are meaningful to you, Vision Ireland can help to bring your quality of life back by assisting you during the adjustment to your new circumstances.

Activities of Daily Living. We can assist with strategies around completing tasks of daily living independently.

This may mean adapting the activity and breaking it down into more manageable tasks or adapting the environment – for example using high contrast chopping board and utensils in the kitchen when chopping vegetables. We can focus on what you enjoy doing or would like to engage in or get back to doing as independently as possible. We provide practical support and solutions to activities of daily living such as reading, writing, personal care, or home care for example.

‘Eccentric Viewing’ is a specific example of a particular area of rehabilitation that can enable a person to read. Eccentric Viewing is when a person may use their peripheral vision to read or view an object if central vision is impaired. We will work with you on this technique from assessment to intervention in order to give you the skills you need to get back to reading.

3 service users walking, one with a white caneOrientation and Mobility training 

Training is available from Vision Ireland’s Orientation & Mobility officers nationwide. We can give you the opportunity to be independent and autonomous, by equipping you with the skills to orientate and mobilise in any environment.