Homecall can help with:
- Visiting Clients in their homes
- Reading and writing correspondence, newsletters and books
- Attending appointments and occasional shopping trips
- Day to day financial administration
- Support to attend clubs, societies and social events
- Access to other services, e.g. the local Blind Society, Social Services or Age Concern
- Day to day tasks, e.g. threading a needle or finding lost items
Who is eligible to use Homecall?
Most Clients who are accepted for the service are registered blind or partially sighted, although registration is not always necessary to qualify for assistance from Homecall. Clients must live in Bexhill.
What Homecall does:
Homecall currently maintains a list of between 50 and 60 Volunteer Visitors with a similar number of Clients. Through our network of trained and vetted Volunteer Visitors we offer regular visits to Clients usually once a week, to help with a variety of tasks made difficult by sight loss. Our Volunteer Visitors help the substantially visually impaired maintain their independence, stay in their own homes and relieve social isolation enabling access to the community.
Each ‘matching’ is monitored closely: Volunteer Visitors are required to submit reports and the Scheme Manager periodically telephones or visits Clients to review the matching. A Volunteer Visitors may be matched with more than one Client. Clients are referred from a variety of sources — principally, Adult Social Care, other charities for the visually impaired, GP surgeries, other health services and Age Concern. Self referrals are also accepted.
Most of our Clients do not have relatives living nearby and are socially and/or geographically isolated. Although established originally to benefit blind and partially sighted people — regardless of whether or not they choose to be registered (and therefore do not show up in Adult Social Care statistics), it is difficult to determine the level of unmet demand. However, it is estimated that one in five people will eventually suffer from visual impairment.