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IN TOUCH – Urgent eye care in Wales and John Slade

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TX:Ìý 28.04.20Ìý 2040-2100

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PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý KEV CORE

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White

Good evening.Ìý Tonight, the man who turned shapes into colours.

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He was very much an advocate of independence for people but also wanted people to be able to have the same opportunities as well.

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White

We mark the life of visually impaired inventor, John Slade, who’s just died.

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And we hear more of your solutions to life under lockdown.

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I’ve learnt lots about myself and my own capability to adapt to unexpected situations and I’m surprised at how well I’m doing.

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White

But first, In Touch listeners have been understandably concerned about how they can get emergency and essential eye care at a time when so much attention is being concentrated on Covid-19.Ìý We heard, last week, reassurances from the Royal College of Ophthalmologists that crucial hospital appointments would be honoured.Ìý But it seems that there are variations throughout the UK about where and how eye care can be given.Ìý For instance, we’ve heard from Optometry Wales how an apparent disadvantage before the pandemic struck may be helping them now.Ìý A relatively scattered population and difficulties in recruiting eye consultants has led the devolved government in Wales to allow high street optometrists to provide a wider range of diagnoses and treatments.Ìý

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Optometry Wales Chief Executive, Sali Davis, explained how this policy is working in the current situation.

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Davis

As a devolved government in Wales we have devolved healthcare and as such that budget is funnelled for primary care optometry.Ìý There are about 352 practices across Wales and very early on we spoke with Welsh government and made the decision to close and just leave open about a third of those practices.Ìý So, in every single cluster area, with every GP practice, there should be an optometric practice open.

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White

So, for an In Touch listener in Wales, who thinks they might have a problem, what would they do, how would they know where to get help?

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Davis

So, if you have an essential eye care need and that can be anything, ranging from a broken pair of glasses to anything as urgent as post-cataract care or an injection for AMD, in some areas of Wales, not all, then you would be able to contact your GP or there is a specific website for patients to access where they will be able to find out where their nearest practice is.

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White

Just spell out for us, what kind of procedures can optometrists in Wales undertake that perhaps you wouldn’t expect to find in England?

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Davis

For some time now, accredited optometrists are able to deliver acute eye care in the community and they’re also able to provided extended eye examinations and through those extended eye examinations will allow the optometrist to perform a series of tests that they would have had in the hospitalised service but now they can have in the community and that will refer and refine the appointment, which means that that patient will get in front of the right person, such as the consultant, in a shorter amount of time.

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White

To what extent are optometrists themselves actually treating patients, even in potentially emergency situations?

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Davis

In urban areas, such as South East Wales, where are there lots of – there is a bigger density of the population, if you have something stuck in your eye maybe or you’ve got a red sore sticky eye, that optometrist will be able to see you in the community, rather than having to be referred to the GP or having to go to the hospital eye casualty.Ìý In a rural part of Wales, Powys in fact, there are optometrists, opticians, who are injecting Wet AMD – Lucentis injections – and that’s quite unusual because it’s typically only a consultant in a hospital that would do that.Ìý But it does mean that it’s so much easier for those patients, who are often very elderly and who live in sparse rural locations, to be able to access that kind of care that would normally be delivered in hospital.

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White

Is there a danger that people may be worried, for example, that they’re getting eye care from someone who isn’t perhaps as fully qualified to do it as an ophthalmologist would be?

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Davis

Well the Welsh government have invested very heavily in funding higher qualifications for optometrists, to be able to deliver those injections, so, they will have had the full training and can and are as qualified and able and competent in that environment to be able to deliver those injections.Ìý And not only those injections but things like if you have glaucoma and you’re on a waiting list, to be able to see that patient in the community and just check that their eyes are still okay and that they haven’t suffered any deterioration in vision, so, are you taking the right drops, are they still working for you.

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White

How close is the integration between optometrists and say surgeons in hospitals?Ìý Is there a danger that there might end up being a gap in the quality of service that people get?

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Davis

I wouldn’t say that, I think it’s probably just allowing the consultant in the hospital more time to see those complex patients and allowing us the opportunity to use our skills.Ìý We are being held in high regard with our UK counterparts, so, we know that the Department of Health is looking closely at the way that we are delivering in Wales and how innovative we have been able to be and the kind of differences that that’s making to the patient.

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White

Sali Davis, Chief Executive of Optometry Wales.

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And next week, we’ll be hearing more about the arrangements being put in place in Scotland.

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Now it was with great sadness that we’ve just heard of the death of visually impaired inventor John Slade.Ìý John was one of my earliest interviewees on In Touch, he’d just embarked on what became a lifetime dedicated to coming up with games and equipment to add to the independence of blind people.Ìý He suffered from congenital cataracts and so did his children.Ìý Well, I’ve been hearing from one of them – his daughter, Val Humphries – about John’s life and how the inventing all began.

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Humphries

We were playing, trying to play Ludo with our friend Maria, who’s completely colour blind and it was one of those old kind of cardboard bases with little counters and Maria couldn’t tell what colour the counters were, we kept on knocking the board and losing our place etc. and my dad wondered if there was a way that we could do this so that people who couldn’t see the colours could actually work out what colour pieces there were and also to make it a little bit easier, so that people wouldn’t knock everything and that kind of thing.Ìý So, it all started, really, out of watching us frustratingly trying to play a game of Ludo.

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White

Because you and your sister and, I think, is it another brother, you all had a visual impairment like your father?

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Humphries

Yes, we were all born with congenital cataracts.Ìý So, we all had partial sight, a lot of our friends and sort of like family friends had varying degrees of sight loss from good, partial, through to no sight at all.Ìý So, we’ve played lots of board games as a family anyway, quite a lot of cards because cards were the only really adapted game that you could play.Ìý So, we played a lot of cards as a family but he wanted to play those kinds of – those family games, like Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, and none of those were available at all in any kind of way that could be played by everybody.

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White

And of course, he didn’t stop with it – just doing it for the family, then he’d started to produce it for visually impaired people generally.Ìý How did he do that because it’s one thing to invent them, it’s another thing to market them and get them made up isn’t it?

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Humphries

Well, there was a bit of luck involved in it as well.Ìý At the time he was part of a group that was helping to setting up a talking newspaper in Redbridge, where we lived, and one of the other people that had got involved in that was a guy called Reg Smith, who owned a plastics factory, so, he was able to make the little shaped – colour shaped pegs.Ìý But the whole kind of – the boards, with the sort of tactile boards with holes drilled out, wooden boards that people played those games on, we used to make those from home, so, there was a proper little cottage industry with us screen printing and we had a huge great big drill thing up in the loft and it was all made by hand.

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White

But it didn’t stop with games, did it?Ìý Tell me about the development, which is the one for which perhaps he’s best remembered now.

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Humphries

Well the things that really took off were the shape coloured buttons because up until that point the only thing that would help you identify the colour of your clothes, if you couldn’t see the colours, were these little hand sewn braille labels that you could put in with the colours in braille, they were almost cross stitched on to a little piece of silk that you put in.Ìý And that required you to be able to read braille but it also required someone else to sew them on for you, whereas a button is much easier to sew on and a lot of people can manage that themselves.Ìý So, the shaped colour buttons were really a gamechanger for a lot of people because it was the first time they’d been able to match their own clothes and work out what the colours were.

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White

What was driving him, do you think because he went on – he was always looking for new things to do, wasn’t he?

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Humphries

He was very much an advocate of independence for people but also wanted people to be able to have the same opportunities as well.Ìý So, the whole concept of the games, the buttons, later on in his life he was trying to work on a concept that would make braille easier and more accessible for people and easier for people to teach.Ìý But he wanted people to have the same opportunities and I think he was very much driven by just wanting the best for blind and partially sighted people.

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White

Of course, there are now quite a lot of these things – matching your clothes, games – which can be done with high tech, did that frustrate him a bit?

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Humphries

It did, yes, he found the whole kind of concept of the way technology had moved on quite frustrating and also the fact that technology has opened so many doors for us but also has given us many, many more challenges as well, as we struggle to keep up and keep pace with everything.Ìý But these days, there are so many – I mean there’s so many apps, there’s so many different ways that you can – particularly with things like identifying colour – there’s so many ways that you can do that.Ìý Whereas back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, it really was the only way that you – his buttons were the only way that you could identify colour.Ìý So, he was also a perfectionist, if I’m honest as well, so wanted his – wanted everything to be the best it could be.Ìý And I think in some ways that probably did hold him up slightly because he spent too much time perfecting things rather than just getting them out there so that people could use them.Ìý So… but he was perfectionist generally in his life as well, that he worked very hard on DIY projects, he was a keen guitar player but absolutely a perfectionist.

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White

Val Humphries remembering her dad John Slade.

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It must help knowing how many hours of fun he gave to so many children and quite a few adults as well.

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I wouldn’t mind betting board games are proving a lifesaver with a few families but everyone will have their own ways of coping at this time.Ìý Well, we’ve been keeping close tabs on how a group of listeners is handling the lockdown and Holly Scott-Gardner isn’t fazed at all.

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Scott-Gardner

I feel like I’ve been prepping for this my whole life.Ìý My use of technology, I mean I’ve been using a computer with a screen reader since I was five, I’m a proficient iPhone user. ÌýI – honestly I hate going to the supermarket anyway, I will do anything to avoid going to the supermarket just in regular times, I can’t stand it.Ìý So, I have been using online deliveries for years.Ìý Beyond going to work it hasn’t disrupted the flow of how I like to do things.Ìý I mean I’ve learnt lots about myself and my own capability to adapt to unexpected situations and I’m surprised at how well I’m doing.Ìý I’ve learnt a lot about maybe my priorities that I had in life before this and what my priorities are now, you know I’ve spent a lot of time since lockdown reaching out to friends and family and I think that that was something that I kind of – well not kind of, I definitely pushed aside.Ìý People still know I’m their friends or that I care about them because I do but people don’t know if you don’t reach out and I think that’s become really apparent.Ìý I need to do a better job of just reaching out to people and being someone who is more present, rather than someone who’s rushing from one thing to another every single day.

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White

Last time, Jane Vernon described herself as someone with long-term mental health problems.Ìý She’s found her online circle of friends increasingly important.

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Vernon

I’d left a message, a very tearful message on a WhatsApp group that I belong to and I don’t normally do that, I’m not somebody that goes on to those things if I’m upset.Ìý A friend rang me at half past seven and said – right, how are you doing.

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White

And that support helped Jane address a problem – she’d been ignoring the need to get a prescription.

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Vernon

I was getting to the stage when I just couldn’t make the effort to go out and get it but I needed to.Ìý I was really, really moved by how supportive everyone was and it’s a cliché, because everyone’s saying it, but it is okay to not be okay, we’ve all had really bad days when just something has got to us and I’ve discovered I have a really lovely group of friends.

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White

Holly Tuke is busy working from home but she’s finding some time for herself too.

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Tuke

I’m doing a lot of the stuff I would usually do, so I’m doing a bit more writing, trying to plan some blog posts and some freelance writing as well.Ìý I’m also doing a bit of baking, which I don’t usually get time to do because I’m always so busy, so that’s been quite nice to do that.Ìý But I’ve taken some time out for myself and tried to do a bit of reading, listen to some podcasts and make sure I’ve got that life/work balance.Ìý And I’ve also been doing a bit of exercise, so I’ve got an exercise bike at home and I’ve been regularly going on that as well, which has been really nice to do – accessible exercise.

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White

Anna Rigby is getting used to the slightly new world of housework.

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Rigby

We’re doing some cleaning ourselves but obviously one of the reasons why we have a cleaner is because we feel that we can’t do quite as a good job and it takes us a lot longer to do the cleaning – all the floors, all the bathrooms.Ìý And quite a few things we’re not really doing, like dusting and cleaning windows and things because we think that’s not so important.Ìý But it’s difficult when you can’t actually ever ask anyone, sort of, is this okay, all this kind of stuff that requires a bit of sighted help.Ìý Like, we have a friend of ours who comes about once a week to help us with identifying food, use by dates, whether something’s off or not and also help with cleaning the – my guide dog’s [indistinct word] pen.Ìý There’s obviously other things that I often do with her that requires either going online, doing stuff that’s a bit less accessible online and we can’t do any of that.Ìý So, all of that’s on hold and I think the most depressing thing of all is that we really can’t tell when this kind of thing will change.

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White

Meanwhile Laura Kennedy thinks she’s becoming more resilient.

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Kennedy

I’ve probably learnt that I’m actually a lot stronger than I thought I was and I can adapt to situations a lot better than I realised.Ìý And I’ve learnt that you kind of need to embrace new things, the new technologies, to enable you to get a more fulfilled life.Ìý And obviously there will be things that I will go back to, like I will go back to running with a guide runner but there are other options out there should I need to use other options in the future, such as exercising at home and speaking to people on different ways on the phone and kind of being social in a different way than I have done before.

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White

And Graham Page is finding the new online world a bit like the old one – he’s having a beer.

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Page

We’ve had virtual pubs, you get together with a few friends, you’re often on Zoom but it could be other things.Ìý You have a few drinks and chat or sometimes people hold a pub quiz.Ìý It passes the time and gives people something to look forward to.Ìý And I’ve also been involved in various forums discussing some cooking to using braille.Ìý It’s meant that it’s a replacement for social interaction and contact really.

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White

And thanks to Tom Walker for helping us gather that material.

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Do keep contacting us on anything that’s on your mind or that you think could help other people.Ìý You can email intouch@bbc.co.uk or go to our website – bbc.co.uk/intouch from where you can download tonight’s and previous editions of the programme.Ìý

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From me, Peter White, and producer, Kev Core, goodbye.

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