Welcome to the nalsvi website

nalsvi (registered charity number 1048951) is an Association of local voluntary organisations for blind and partially sighted people. Members are registered charities, independent of major national charities for the blind, providing local services for local people.

What is a local society for the blind?

A local society for the blind is an independent registered charity offering practical support and advice to individuals (and their family and friends) coping with the effects of sight loss. A local society can offer a  range of services which might include:

giving advice and information on the range of equipment that is available to make daily living easier. They may have an Equipment/ Resource Centre where you can view and try out these aids before you buy. Certain larger items may be offered on loan. 

giving advice on benefits entitlements. If you are registered as blind or partially sighted you are entitled to certain benefits/concessions such as council tax reduction, free NHS sight tests, travel concessions etc

providing a home visiting or befriending service with volunteers who can help you with shopping, correspondence reading or simply a friendly chat.

running weekly social clubs, special interest groups and activities

organising holidays or days out

 

If a local society cannot provide a certain service for you, they will signpost you to the nearest source of help.

There is no typical local society for the blind. All are different in terms of size and reach, and in the range of services they offer. We have members that are purely voluntary organisations run by a small band of volunteers and with no paid staff and others that employ 60 or more staff and have hundreds of volunteers on their books. Most fall somewhere in between.

There is a general understanding that local societies for the blind are the local branch of  a major national charity for blind people. This is not so. Local societies are totally independent organisations delivering their own range of services direct to the visually impaired people in their town, city or county area. They may work with national organisations on certain projects (indeed nalsvi encourages partnership work where appropriate) but they are autonomous.

Being independent means that local soceties have to find their own funding and income can come from several sources including contract work with their local authority, applications to trust funds or the national lottery programmes but most rely on bequests or voluntary donations from the public. If you make a donation or a bequest to your local society you can be sure that it will be used to help local people
 
Local societies rely a great deal on volunteers too to deliver their services. If you would like to volunteer for a local blind society do get in touch to see what opportunities are available in your area. You will find contact details of all nalsvi members in the NALSVI Members section.

nalsvi has the unique role of promoting and supporting the work of  local societies and seeks to encourage improvement in the quality and diversity of services provided by its members. nalsvi has a set of Core Services Standards in the form of a handbook which local societies can use as a self assessment tool to evaluate their services and to help them to identify areas suitable for development to meet local needs and budgets.

nalsvi  is funded from a variety of sources, namely subscriptions from members and grants from agencies such a the Department of Health (Section 64 grants) and more recently from partnership work.