Sensory service finds new ways to provide support to people in Cambridgeshire during coronavirus crisis

The Cambridgeshire County Council Sensory Service Team is continuing to provide vital support to sensory impaired people throughout the pandemic.

Due to the nature of the work, staff often work in close proximity with the service users, but because of social distancing rules, they have had to make some changes.

Alongside other prevention and early intervention teams, sensory services work with people with sensory impairments, such as those who are deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, severely sight impaired and sight impaired.

Normally, qualified visual impairment rehabilitation workers would visit service users in their home and help them gain skills and independence or assist them with daily tasks. This can include things such as helping them change duvets or learn cooking skills.

But the pandemic means staff are unable work as they usually would. Instead, the team has been looking at new ways to complete rehab and work with people. This includes setting up calls and video calls and talking them through daily tasks.

Nic Poole, rehabilitation worker, said: “I had been working with one of our service users, Sue, for many weeks, teaching her how to use a long cane in the community and building her skills within the home, when Covid-19 struck. She had continued to receive regular calls from us as she was on the vulnerable persons list, but I decided to see if we could get her using Zoom, which we managed.

“This enabled me to read some of her correspondence which she had been unable to access and then discussed trying kitchen skills the following week. I set up a makeshift kitchen in my home office with good lighting and contrasting coloured equipment to enable her to use her residual vision to see a demonstration before trying herself. Sue set up the camera in her kitchen so I could clearly see what she was doing whilst she was following verbal instructions. This was a great success.”

Councillor Anna Bailey, chairman of Cambridgeshire’s adult services committee, said: “Despite the huge challenges our team are facing, they continue to do a brilliant job and provide an excellent service to people in our community with sensory impairments."