Sight Life, formerly known as Cardiff Institute for the Blind until October 2019, offers a wide range of direct local services to support blind and partially sighted people across much of South Wales. Our mission is to help people live independent, active, social, and fulfilling lives. Established in 1865, we are one of Wales' oldest charities.
Our vision is working with the day when all blind and partially sighted people are able to participate fully in their communities, enjoying the same opportunities, freedoms, responsibilities and quality of life as people who are fully sighted.
Our mission is to make a positive difference to the lives of blind and partially sighted people in Cardiff, Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Rhondda Cynon Taff by providing support advice, social activities and the skills to enable them to reach their full potential and lead independent lives.
Sight Life (SL) offers direct support services, and community activity for blind and partially sighted people (BPS) across South Wales.
We also sign post service users, their families and carers to partnership support services that assist them with their sight loss related issues.
Demand for our services is increasing. We face a post code lottery in terms of support and funding that is made available to the third sector in the 4 local authority areas we cover.
In Rhondda Cynon Taff (RCT), no local authority funding is available to support the essential third sector services we provide for BPS that enable them to live independent lives or engage in isolation reducing activities.
All activity, staffing and community development is funded from our own funds and reserves. In RCT, the direct cost of sight loss is estimated to be £10,500,000 each year.
RCT is the third most deprived local authority in Wales and has a health record that is worse than the Wales average. This can mean that donations are hard to attract from the public, and long-term unemployment coupled with sight loss can be devastating to BPS and their family units.
By 2030, there are expected to be 9,840 BPS in RCT, an increase of 27% from 2021. RCT’s valley geography and poor transport links contribute highly to the isolation that BPS in the area experience.
Against the increase of pressures on our core costs and increased costs of living pressures on service users SL seeks to continue to:• Provide locally based life-changing services, contact lines and volunteer development programmes in the area, and• build upon the existing corporate networks we have in the area to enable us to develop long-term funding partnership proposals in the absence of Local Authority support.