Title: Promoting Knowledge Exchange Across the Sight Loss Sector
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Almost two million people in the UK live with sight loss that significant impacts on their daily lives. This number will increase dramatically in the coming decades, driven by our aging population. People with sight loss experience lower levels of participation and increased restrictions across many aspects of their lives, both compared with other disabled people and compared with the general population (McManus and Lord, 2012). Analysis conducted by RNIB (with NatCen Social Research) found that people with sight loss: - Had lower levels of wellbeing and self-confidence, and lower satisfaction with health - Experienced more difficulties accessing health services - Were more likely to experience financial hardship - Faced more restrictions to participation in education and employment - Reported less choice about how they spend their free time - Faced major barriers to travel and shopping. A wide range of organisations, from large national charities to small local voluntary groups, work to improve circumstances for people with sight loss. 97 local sight loss charities are members of Visionary, the umbrella organisation for local sight loss organisations. VISION 2020 UK, an organisation bringing together national sight loss organisations, has a further 52 members. Both actively endorse this bid. Organisations need evidence to develop services and secure funds to deliver those services, but many within the sector highlight lack of research awareness, skills and resources as a critical issue. We believe that it is vital that good quality survey data, and social research in general, be communicated to and understood by a wide range of people across the sight loss sector, to enable the sector to: - Develop services on the basis of evidence of need. - Make an evidence-based case in funding applications and fundraising activity. - Inform their internal organisational strategies and priorities. - Generate authoritative statistics for campaign work. - Avoid unnecessary external research commissioning. - Identify gaps in their evidence base. - Lobby or influence the policy and practice of public and private organisations from a position of informed authority. Our programme of work involves five Work Strands: Work Strand 1 - Knowledge exchange across the sector. Eight regional workshops and networking events to examine local sight loss organisations' evidence needs and to provide training in how existing datasets and research could meet those needs. Work Strand 2 - Professional and workforce development. A bespoke social research training programme for researchers, policy officers and service managers in the national sight loss sector. Skills developed would include: conducting rapid evidence reviews, principles of research design and specification, processes for data acquisition, data management and basic analysis skills, and techniques and tools for data visualisation. A new post for a formerly unemployed blind or partially sighted trainee will be created, to join the project team to help deliver these work strands. Work Strand 3 - Knowledge Hub. A centre of knowledge and expertise, embedded at RNIB, offering sight loss organisations a point of contact for: data requests, advice on datasets or social science research studies to use, whether research already exists that meets their needs, supporting people to do further analysis themselves and, where necessary and possible, conducting or arranging further analysis. Work Strand 4 - Collaboration and networking. A research network focused on sustainability for the project by developing collaboration and cooperation to help inform or scope new research priorities. Work Strand 5 - Project management and governance. We are organisations with a strong track record of collaborating on projects and networking together. We will build on this, maintain tight project management, and evaluate the programme with clear measures of success.


Research activity codes: 8.5 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (HEALTH SERVICES)
Health categories: EYE