Set up in 2003 by a group of optometrists, Vision Care for Homeless People provides eye care services to people experiencing homelessness and other vulnerable people in an accessible and friendly environment in which they feel safe, welcome and comfortable.

We currently have eight clinics: London (Liverpool Street and Stratford), Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Exeter, Gloucester, Leeds. The clinics operate usually one morning, afternoon or full day a week within homeless day centres and we hold GOS mandatory services contracts to provide an NHS opticians service at each.

Now please tell us about yourself.

When people are affected by homelessness they are particularly disadvantaged when it comes to obtaining sight tests, glasses and eye care. They suffer a higher level of eye problems than the general population. They do not feel welcome in high street opticians, are prone to losing or breaking their glasses, and often miss out on having their glasses paid for by the NHS, so simply cannot afford them.

Our experience of running opticians over the years has shown that for various eligibility reasons only around a third of people experiencing homelessness qualify for NHS funding at the point of service, so find it impossible to get the eye care they need. 

Over to you ...

Vision Care for Homeless People has experience in setting up clinics and will assist the local team, providing advice, support and resources.

To get a clinic up and running, we need a few dedicated local volunteers with time and energy to join a start-up team and help set up the clinic.

Once the clinic is operating some volunteers are needed to form a local leadership team to oversee the clinic and they continue to be supported by the small staff team at Vision Care for Homeless People.

Once up and running, there are the volunteers who run the clinics: Optometrists to perform eye tests and clinic assistants who may be Dispensing Opticians, or lay clinic assistants who we train for their role. Our services run typically half a day or one day a week and most people helping in a clinic offer their time once a week, once a month or once a quarter.

In the next question, we want to gauge to what level you think you could be involved.

Although there's plenty to do in setting up and running an opticians clinic, Vision Care for Homeless People will help provide a lot of help. Here are some of the ways the VCHP staff team will help and support your local clinic:

Setting up contracts, agreements and services.

General Ophthalmic Services (GOS) contract compliance and management
Volunteer recruitment, communications and rotas.
Operational systems, standards and performance processes.
Publicity and fundraising
Finding equipment and in-kind resources
Accounting, finance and insurance.

Here's two lists of tasks that need to be done by the local team of volunteers. One list is tasks to start up a clinic. The other covers ongoing tasks to maintain a clinic. Please indicate which ones you might take on.

First start up.

How might you be interested in helping run your local VCHP clinic on an on-going basis?

When we open the clinic we will need a team of optometrists, dispensing opticians and clinic assistants to volunteer in the clinic. Clinic assistants do not need experience working in a opticians as we provide training. 

The clinic will likely run for a full day, but may be a morning or afternoon. Some people volunteer weekly, some  fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or just occasionally.  We provide training beforehand, but you should aim to make yourself available for a few sessions so you can get used to our clinic operations. We aim to book volunteers into the rota up to 6 months in advance although sometimes we need to fill a gap at short notice. 

To help us decide which day of the week it would be best to open the clinic, please let us know your potential availability.

We wish you all the very best and look forward to working with you.