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IN TOUCH - Habilitation Report; Blind Footballer

TX:Ìý 13.04.2021Ìý 2040-2100

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PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý SIMON HOBAN

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White

Good evening.Ìý Tonight, the parents who believe their visually impaired children are missing out on essential life skills.Ìý And, we meet the 22-year-old who’s turning his love of football into a potentially thriving business.

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Clip
Can’t see-ness is often mistaken for can’t do-ness and it was only halfway through high school I realised my dream of being able to play on an even playing field could become a reality.

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White

I’ll be talking to Azeem Amir later in the programme.

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But first, for much of this century blind charities have been expressing concerns that the teaching of life skills, such as getting around, running a home, have been patchy and dependent on where you live.Ìý A series of reports by the RNIB has placed, on record, that many local authorities weren’t employing enough staff to pass on these skills.Ìý And now Guide Dogs and the Pocklington Trust, have produced a joint report, which says that large numbers of children are missing out on learning daily living skills.Ìý The report called Making Childhood Equal, paints a pretty depressing picture with numbers receiving these services, in many authorities, being described as tiny and reports of restrictive eligibility criteria being applied.

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Well, our reporter, Fern Lulham, has been looking into this.Ìý Fern, what exactly are the kind of services we’re actually talking about here for children?

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Lulham

Well, Peter, habilitation support involves one to one training for visually impaired children and young people.Ìý And it aims to develop their personal mobility and life skills.Ìý So, for a very young child, that could simply be navigating their own home, whereas with a teenager, it might be using public transport or cooking.

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White

So, really, in a nutshell, this is about equipping visually impaired children to live independent lives?

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Lulham

Exactly.Ìý And to get under the skin of that report, I thought it was important to speak to people with a direct interest in the issues that it raises.Ìý So, first, to learn more about the service itself, I spoke to Angela Wood.Ìý Angela is the chair of Habilitation at VI UK, which is the professional body membership organisation that trains and supports habilitation specialists.Ìý I started by asking her about the importance of habilitation and the current levels of provision.

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Wood

Life skills are the essential component required for children with visual impairment but there’s less than one in three registered blind and partially sighted people are actually offered mobility training and one in five people don’t actually receive any support around the home.Ìý We’ve got a real mixed picture around the country and what we end up with is a series of short-term crisis management intervention programmes.

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Lulham

What are some of the risks for visually impaired children if they don’t get this habilitation support that you’re talking about?

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Wood

Only one in four blind and partially people of working age are in work.Ìý And people with poorer functional vision, they are much less likely to be in employment.Ìý And there’s been no significant change in these figures since 1991, when we started collating these reports.Ìý So, this is the future that children, who have a vision impairment in our schools today, this is the outlook they are facing.Ìý So, despite local authority investment of more specialist academic support over the decades, this does not necessarily correlate to the social and employment inclusion.

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Lulham

What do you think can be done about this to make it better?

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Wood

We need to have more habilitation specialists who are registered with Habilitation VI UK.Ìý We know then, they have the right qualifications, the relevant qualifications to work with children and young people.Ìý We currently have around 41,000 children and young people, from birth to 25, living with sight loss in the UK.Ìý There are approximately 250 habilitation specialists in the UK.Ìý We are working with massive huge caseloads and that’s just unrealistic if we are going to put in those real quality interventions that the children need in order to be ready for work, ready for life and ready for employment.

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Lulham

So, Angela gave us a very clear picture there of demand for the service outstripping supply by local authorities and this has led to other organisations stepping in to fill the gap.Ìý Rachel Sutton’s daughter, Nell, was born severely visually impaired and Rachel told me how she was referred to Guide Dogs for the habilitation support that Nell needs.

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Sutton

It was actually our house visiting team who knew somebody within the local education authority and they then knew that Guide Dogs were starting this new service.Ìý And then it went from there really.Ìý

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Lulham

And did you find it difficult to get support that Nell needed before she was referred to Guide Dogs?

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Sutton

Yes, I would say it was just a really slow process.Ìý So, I had to be quite proactive myself to try and find any help, any support that might be available.Ìý And you can imagine, when you’ve got a new born baby, the last thing that you want to do is chase up people and you want people just to get in contact with you.

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White

One of the things that strikes me there, Fern, was that it seemed that Rachel got her habilitation support for Nell more by chance than design, it was only because somebody knew about someone, who knew about someone, who knew the service available in her area, not everyone would have known about that.

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Lulham

Yes and parents having to do their own research, rather than being told what support is available is definitely a common theme here, Peter.Ìý Sarah Davies daughter, Annabelle, lost her sight at just one-year-old and I asked her about her experience of seeking habilitation support and here’s what she told me.

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Davies

It was the day after we got back from hospital with a newly disabled and profoundly blind child at the time.Ìý We really wanted some advice and support from them about how we would keep her safe and they said – Look here’s a roll of very bright orange tape, you could put it on to sharp corners or things that are sticking out if you feel that she would benefit from that, so she doesn’t bump into things.Ìý

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Lulham

When your daughter was first given her education healthcare plan, was it explained to you that her habilitation and mobility needs should be included in that plan?

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Davies

No, no, nobody explained anything to me about anything that should be in the plan, anything that went into the plan that she finally got was really as a result of us having to spend a lot of time trying to understand the law and work it all out ourselves. ÌýI speak to lots of families that have children with visual impairments and other disabilities, everyone’s story is the same as ours really, that it’s a hard slog and you can feel very much like the onus is on you to make sure that everything happens, otherwise nothing will.

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Lulham

So, as you’d expect, a lack of habilitation support affects not only the child but also their parents who naturally want the best for their child.Ìý Jane Renton only became aware of habilitation support when her two visually impaired daughters – Lily and Tallulah – were well into their teens.Ìý I think her words sum up the impact that the current situation can have better than any report ever could.

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Renton

When you have a visually impaired baby you have this very optimistic idea that everyone will want the best for this baby, exactly the same way that you will.Ìý For us, disability has never been anything that we’ve seen as anything negative, so we just got on with our lives because they’re amazing, they’re both amazing, they’re so multi-talented and very skilled.Ìý But sometimes when you’re kind of reaching for the stars, you forget that you have to have a solid basis to build on.Ìý I suppose we sort of thought that maybe there would be things that could be helpful for them as they got older but nobody said to us – actually you need to start those skills early.

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Lulham

How does it make you feel to think that they’ve missed out on this support with life skills and mobility training as a mother?

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Renton

Having seen the little girl who had a hab officer when she was a baby, that actually – that actually made me quite emotional because I thought – I thought over all the support and help they could have had and how much more independent and confident they could have felt if they had had that from such an early age.Ìý And, of course, as a parent, you feel that you have let them down.Ìý Consciously, I knew that it’s not me that has failed them but from a personal point of view it has affected all our mental health because we all feel that we should be somewhere more optimistic and a much happier place than we are.

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Lulham

So, what’s the legal situation when it comes to local authorities providing habilitation support for children?Ìý I put this point to Habilitation UK’s chair, Angela Wood.

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Wood

There is currently no mandatory requirement.Ìý It’s estimated that there’s going to be 4.1 million people will be affected by sight loss in the UK by 2050.Ìý So, government do need to act now.Ìý We need to ensure that those young people have similar opportunities and experiences as those children who have sight.Ìý To have their own high aspirations and to gain meaningful paid employment and make a positive contribution and really feel integrated into our society.Ìý So, I think it’s really important that we look at how we’re going to do that, who needs to do that and qualified habilitation specialists are absolutely at the heart of working with children with visual impairment.

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White

That’s Angela Wood ending Fern Lulham’s report.Ìý Thank you, Fern.

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Well, we did invite the Association of Directors of Children’s Services to come on to the programme, but no one was available.Ìý We were told that it’s taken very seriously, this subject, by local authorities and services in this area will be provided in partnership with others, such as schools and health partners.

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Well, Clare Messenger is Head of Children’s and Young People’s services at Guide Dogs and they produced that report.

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Clare, how many children, do you think, are falling through the net?

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Messenger

That’s a difficult question to answer.Ìý We know that because the eligibility criteria in each local authority varies, that some children are only – only have habilitation support if they have severe vision impairment, where others will only access that support if they have the education and healthcare plan.Ìý So, there are many, many other children that either don’t have an EHCP or just fall below that criteria.Ìý So, the actual numbers that don’t receive the support that we feel that they need is really difficult to articulate.

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White

So, what do you regard as the role of Guide Dogs in providing habilitation services for young people?Ìý After all, your name, itself, still gives the firm impression that your primary role is to provide guide dogs, which makes you think, you know, would people know or even think to come to you to get this kind of service?

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Messenger

Well, we’re definitely working on that.Ìý And we are trying to raise that awareness.Ìý And I must say we do work closely with the local authorities as well, in partnership, they do commission our habilitation staff.Ìý So, half of our habilitation support is commissioned and working in partnership with the schools.

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White

It could be argued, though, that your role perhaps should be campaigning for local authorities to meet their responsibilities rather than filling the role yourselves.Ìý I mean this might discourage local authorities for thinking this is our job.

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Messenger

Yeah, we do both, as a charity we are campaigning for more and fairer provision for children, that is definitely part of what we see the use of Guide Dogs.Ìý But we do provide charitable services.Ìý So, we provide family support, education support, family events.

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White

I just want to ask you how you get referrals of children who need your service because what was really striking about that report was that people like Rachel just got to hear about you.Ìý But you know that doesn’t sound the ideal way for a child to get what you would have thought would have been a universal service.

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Messenger

No, indeed.Ìý And so, from our point of view, we are – we are trying to make our services more – more universal known and we are very happy to be able to – to be providing those new services and our current services.Ìý I suppose the sticking point – the difficult for parents is being able to understand and navigate not just the voluntary sector – as you quite rightly pointed out – but the support that they should be getting as part of when their child is going to school.

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White

Clare Messenger, thank you very much indeed.Ìý And I can promise you we will be returning to this and there is an open invitation for the local authorities to put their view to us.

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Now, time to meet someone who doesn’t seem to have missed out much on daily living skills.Ìý As a teenager Azeem Amir dreamed of playing football for England, like his hero Paul Gascoigne.Ìý At the age of 22 he’s not only achieved that, with the national team of blind players for England, but he’s studying for a masters, he’s set up his own business – oh, and given a Ted talk as well.

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Clip – Ted Talk

[Applause] First impressions, we all make them.Ìý So, what was the first impression you made when you saw me being walked on stage?Ìý Was it my dapper suit?Ìý My handsome features or did you realise I was blind?Ìý That first impression – how will that impact on how you’re listening to my talk today and what will be the impression that lasts once I’ve left this stage?Ìý Hopefully, it won’t be my funny Rochdale accent but rather the message I wish to share.Ìý That I believe I’ve seen more than if I could see.Ìý That’s a challenge indeed but the prize would be breaking down some of the ideas and perceptions you may have of disability.

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White

Azeem Amir, strutting his stuff in Brighton, that was in 2019.Ìý

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Azeem, welcome to In Touch.Ìý First of all, just tell us about the football first, how did your love of that all get started?

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Amir

It started when I was 15, which is obviously pretty late but that’s kind of because I actually didn’t know the sport existed until then.Ìý I went through mainstream education and you know the sport wasn’t really accessible because the teachers in mainstream didn’t really know it existed and it was only showcased to me at a have a go day even run by the local authority.Ìý And when it was, I initially didn’t think it would work, I thought it would just be a load of blind people running into each other, things like that and I thought it would be just a bit of a mess.Ìý But actually, I just started to understand the sport and its technicalities and I started to realise actually it’s a really high-level sport and started playing for a team and then, yeah, that developed in a few seasons playing domestically to then being called up to do some work with an international pathway.

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White

Yeah, well, I’ve played blind football as well but not as well as you.Ìý And so, for us, it was – there was quite a lot of blind people just running into each other.Ìý Azeem, obviously covid has put a stop to most, if not all, tournaments, so what’s next for you – is it the Paralympics still?

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Amir

So, we actually missed out on Tokyo by one kick…

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White

Oh no.

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Amir

… so, in a semi-final on penalties we actually missed out by one kick and obviously it was quite a tough pill to swallow.Ìý But we’re now looking at the full phased return of football which is really exciting and yeah, looking forward to getting back on the pitch.

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White

Now, what’s fascinating is that you’ve turned your love of football into a tool, if you like, to use in the business that you’ve started, helping to raise awareness of disability.Ìý Just explain that business idea and how the link with football works.

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Amir

Yeah, so Learn with ESS – ess – it all stands for learning with education, sport and speaking.Ìý And the hope is that through these workshops we can actually change the way people think about disability but do it in a really teambuilding way and do it in a way where actually it’s not just a PowerPoint or a You Tube video that people are watching, it’s a full and interactive and practical programme that they’re taking part in.

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White

You actually – you actually get them playing football with you, don’t you?

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Amir

Yeah, that’s it, that’s it.Ìý So, we actually go in and we get them to put a blindfold on and try what it’s like to step into the world of someone without sight and then we introduce some blind sports to them and the hope is that they’ll try the sports or they’ll try the classroom-based sessions and empathy towards someone who might not be able to see would be really, really kind of powerful because, you know, it’s hard enough as it is to walk in a straight line with a blindfold on, let alone play football.

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White

Azeem Amir, good luck with it and thanks very much for coming on.

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Amir

Thanks for having me.

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White

And that’s it for today.Ìý We always welcome your comments and suggestions, you can email intouch@bbc.co.uk or go to our website bbc.co.uk/intouch.Ìý More information there plus you can download tonight’s and previous editions of the programme.

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From me, Peter White, producer Simon Hoban and studio managers Owyn Williams and Mark Ward.Ìý Goodbye.