Anne, I was just passing back and forth with Marmalade, please dont think I was slagging the NHS (After all, they fill my pay packet at the end of the month!) I just hate to see the post code lotteries that exist and the crazy waiting times that exist etc!

I do hope Hillary Armstrong can help you out.... I may need to be going to my MP very soon too:

I told you all about how The London Borough of Southwark granted me a Freedom Pass (which entitles the bearer free travel on Busses, Tube and Trains within Zones 1-6) when I told them about my eye and provided my evidence to prove it.
Now I have moved to a different London Borough (Waltham Forest) It is standard procedure to re-apply to the new council area for a pass issued from them.
I did exactly the same procedure as with Southwark, but Waltham Forest are saying that I am not eligible becuase I am not on the national partially sighted register and that I should contact my consultant to see if I can get registered.

I contacted the consultant at Moorfields and a letter came yesterday to say he has reviewed my files and I am ineligible to be registered as partially sighted.

I contacted Waltham Forest and asked them why this was so different to how Southwark had done it, and they said "Every borough has different policies. The Government issues a set of rules on how Freedom Passes are issued and it is up to each individual borough to interperet them as they se fit"

I find this absurd..... Two councils, within 10 miles of eachother, in London, doing things so vastly differently!?


Have you guys any suggestions??

I think we are stuck in many ways. While the law allows us to drive, there is a good argument for saying that we shouldn't have assistance with the cost of public travel. I thnk you were just lucky to hit a generous borough who were more sympathetic than most.

The fact that I gave up riding a motorbike because I no longer felt safe means that I would love to see the law changed to allow us to be classed as disabled. Maybe that's where our efforts should go.. into trying to make people see that monocular vision is a real impairment. But I wouldn't know where to start!

Ann

I know what you are saying about being able to drive, and I had thought about that aswell, BUT, the DVLA classes us as restricted drivers as we are not allowed to drive Cat C1/D1 or PSV vehicles, so if we didnt have an impairment those rules wouldnt exist.
AND, for example, at Uni, they never stop calling me visually impaired and sending me all sorts of stuff in the internal mail.....

So where is the consistency!?

Well, I had contacted the RNIB to see what their view was and the lovely man on the helpline sent me some info which arrived today (very quick indeed!)

I am now both mad and lost! lol....

I'l quote the relevant bits to you and see what you think:


From "The Benefits of Registering as Blind or Partially Sighted: RNIB June 2005"

"Loss of sight in only one eye does not qualify you for registration, unless you have poor sight in the remaining eye"

but then goes on to say:

"The Ophthalmologist carrying out the CVI (Certificate of Visual Impairment) test uses a combination of both your visual acuity and your field of vision to judge whether you are eligible to be registered, and at which level.
If you have a good visual acuity then usually you will have had to have lost a large part of your visual field to be registered as sight impaired/partially sighted."

(The bit I have highlighted in bold seems to suggest we fall into that category?!)

Then the technical bits:

To be registered as sight impaired/partially sighted your sight has to fall into one of the following categories:

# Visual acuity of 3/60 to 6/60 with a full field of vision
#visual acuity of up to 6/24 with a moderate reduciton of field of vion or with a central part of vision that is cloudy or blurry.
#visual acuity of up to 6/18 if a large part of your filed of vision, for example a whole half of your vision, is missing or a lot of your peripheral vision is missing.


SO, there we have contradiciting parts......

I wear glasses to read with my good eye, and I need them to see things far away, but Im not sure where I am on the Snellen Chart, if id fall into that last category of 6/18 or not (although the part about a whole half of the vision is definatley for us!)


So I am thoroughly confused!

Hi Irishangel,

Apparently, losing one eye removes 25% of our visual fields, which isn't enough to be considered "a large part" by the presumably fully-sighted people who make the stupid rules. In the U.S. people with one working eye aren't automatically considered visually impaired... I think our visual fields have to be 80% compromised, if I remember that right... but we are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA):



A couple weeks ago I went to an event my agency funded, an awards ceremony for kids who had written essays and "done art" about the Special Olympics... they were all ordinary kids, not in Special Olympics themselves. So I show up in my eyepatch to take photos. I've never been so popular in my life! All the kids were keen to show their teachers that they'd internalized all the messages about treating people with disabilities just like anyone else, and they practically overwhelmed me with affection. Little suck-ups! But it was very funny and cute.

Ya'ara

Hi Marmalade................what? no kiss?

It seems to me that you have been lucky enough to be referred to the best eye hospital in the UK and are receiving what amounts to Private care but the NHS are picking up the bill. Well done, good for you.
But what you are getting is not the bog-standard care most other NHS users get.
No wonder you are so Pro the NHS.
Isn’t it a little unfair of you to try and stifle criticism of the NHS when you yourself are enjoying a higher standard of care that the rest of us have to pay for?

Good luck Anne. I hope everything goes well for you. I tried, unsuccessfully, to get my local health authority pay for me to have my implant replaced some years ago, so good luck.

I was told recently that it costs the NAES £600 to make an eye, so even if you are not entitled to the full cost, it seems morally right that you should be refunded at least that much.

I don't know what you mean by that. I don't do kisses.

You are wrong. Moorfields is an ordinary NHS hospital. Any local would automatically go there and anyone else can be referred.

If anyone wants a referral to a certain hospital, then ask. I didn't actually ask myself, the consultant just did it. She had to refer me somewhere and that's what she chose.

Ann

Following on this subject.
For 2 years i was paid disability living allowance but when i went to be reasssessed i was told there is not much wrong with my eyesight if only i had 2 of these i would have agreed with the doc who assessed me.
Maybe i should have appealed against this decision and in hindsight i wish i had.
I'm looking forward to going on Monday and hope the end result is as good as everyone seems to be telling me it will be
Anne xx

I was just messing around with you, you don’t seem to taken with me.



OK, Moorfields is an NHS hospital but it could hardly be called ordinary http://www.moorfields-private.co.uk/Home … it has a private wing, which in itself makes it pretty unique and an excellent reputation that attracts paying patients from all over the world. And in my opinion all that private money attracts the top people in their field.

I perhaps shouldn’t have been slagging off the NHS but the NAES.
I think I might ask for a referral, apparently if you ask your GP they have to refer you.


Hey, if we are there at the same time Ann, I’ll buy you a coffee.

That's what is so annoying. People seem to think that losing an eye is nothing much.. just a bit of vision one side. The whole thing of stereoscopic vision seems to get forgotten.

I know that when I get tired which I seem to do more quickly than others at work, I start tripping up steps and bumping into things. At my busy time at work when I do very long hours, I am always covered in bruises. I think it takes us more concentration to do everything and it's easy to lose concentration.

I might write to my MP to see if they would support a change in attitude towards us and with it would come the changes that irishangel talks of.

Ann

Where are you in the country? Good luck with the referral. Get them to write to the Ocular Prosthetics department specifically and not just the hospital or you will get the wrong sort of appointment.. been there, done that.

Ann

I’m finding, as I’m getting older I’m not compensating as well as I used to. I seem to bump into people a little bit more, I try and get hold of something and find I’m a mile off, that sort of thing.

But I would never ask to be classified as having some kind of disability, even if it meant I might benefit in some way, such as cheaper travel costs. Pride perhaps, but I just wouldn’t.

Perhaps we should have a LL and see what everyone’s opinion on this is.

think some sort of a poll would be a very good idea especially for those of us in the uk.
Maybe we could end up getting something done .......you never know do you....
What parts of the country are we all from?
I'm from the north east Consett in County Durham
Anne xx

Apparently the guidelines as to what constitutes a disability under the Disability Discrimination Act are being amended and will be published in April. One change is that monocular vision is to be added somewhere along the line. It's difficult to say quite what that means until we see it but at least we'll get a mention. That is very good news for me and my work situation.

Marmalade Said:Apparently the guidelines as to what constitutes a disability under the Disability Discrimination Act are being amended and will be published in April. One change is that monocular vision is to be added somewhere along the line.

Ann, that is EXCELLENT news! Do you have any details?

HappySad said:But I would never ask to be classified as having some kind of disability, even if it meant I might benefit in some way, such as cheaper travel costs. Pride perhaps, but I just wouldn’t.

HappySad, I used to think like you, but now I dont give a toot.
Basically, working for the NHS you see manys a person who is in hospital because its is warmer, they get 3 meals a day and they dont have to pay for it. The list of the benefits they are on are endless and they have their social situations suited to the governments hand-out criteria. They have little or no need of most of the care and benefits they recieve and I feel that for those of us with a legitimate problem, a very REAL problem then we should at least get some sort of help.
Its not like you can fudge the loss of an eye!

I found this on the web. It's mentioned in there.
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/dwp/ ... uation.pdf

Nice article here which is supportive
http://www.guidedogsqld.com.au/cgi-bin/ ... lar/schein