Achieving potential blindly.
Donation protected
We are raising money to give our son the best start possible in his further education of studying Scottish Highers over the next 2 years. William is 16 years old and was born with normal vision. Unfortunately by age 12 years he was registered blind due to him inheriting a degenerative eye condition called Stargardts. No-one else in the family has this as it is inherited due to a recessive gene, so my husband and I carry the gene but do not have the symptoms. Unfortunately it is a very cruel condition as it is degenerative and William appears to have a severe form. The condition causes the cones in his eyes to die, these are the cells which give us colour vision and any detail of what we are looking at. William is able to walk without bumping into things because his rod cells still work and they give him peripheral vision. Until Easter this year he could access his work through enlarged print, but just before he took his GCSE exams he had another drop in vision. This has had a massive impact on William, not just in terms of accessing education in general, but also his exams and in terms of his confidence.
We have a good support network in place and have advice from an NHS colleague who is a paediatrician with specialism in visual impairment. She is supporting us and our school putting a package of care together to give William the best learning opportunities to help him study for an independent life and career. However, this comes at a cost. We have been advised that William should learn braille and learn to use a screen reader ('Jaws' - about £750) we also need to purchase a PC laptop (large screen budgeting around £600-£700). He will attend Royal Blind School Edinburgh once a week to access learning appropriate IT skills, habilitation (independent living skills for the future, cooking/use of public transport etc), further braille lessons and confidence building/emotional support. This will come to about £9,200 over 2 years. We also need to purchase a piece of equipment called Connect 12 (£2000). This is a fantastic piece of equipment supplied by Humanware which will allow William to access textbooks and a variety of learning material.
William has the support of an habilitation officer from Guide dogs UK called Grant Smith. Him and his colleague Tracy are working with William on further independent living skills and supporting him to learn to travel to Edinburgh independently. Their input is free as Guide dogs is a charity which supports visually impaired people. For this we are very grateful. Due to the complex nature of travelling to the Royal Blind School, William will require a taxi from the station, we have been informed this will cost just over £2000 over the 2 years.
My husband Leslie and I would be hugely appreciative and grateful should anyone out there feel this cause is worthy of their support. We are now feeling more confident about William's future as we feel we have a direction of how to help William study, learn, develop and grow into an independent young man despite what life has cruelly thrown at him.
Thank you for taking the time to read about our fund raising cause. All being well, William will start this package of support at the beginning of September this year (2018).
We have a good support network in place and have advice from an NHS colleague who is a paediatrician with specialism in visual impairment. She is supporting us and our school putting a package of care together to give William the best learning opportunities to help him study for an independent life and career. However, this comes at a cost. We have been advised that William should learn braille and learn to use a screen reader ('Jaws' - about £750) we also need to purchase a PC laptop (large screen budgeting around £600-£700). He will attend Royal Blind School Edinburgh once a week to access learning appropriate IT skills, habilitation (independent living skills for the future, cooking/use of public transport etc), further braille lessons and confidence building/emotional support. This will come to about £9,200 over 2 years. We also need to purchase a piece of equipment called Connect 12 (£2000). This is a fantastic piece of equipment supplied by Humanware which will allow William to access textbooks and a variety of learning material.
William has the support of an habilitation officer from Guide dogs UK called Grant Smith. Him and his colleague Tracy are working with William on further independent living skills and supporting him to learn to travel to Edinburgh independently. Their input is free as Guide dogs is a charity which supports visually impaired people. For this we are very grateful. Due to the complex nature of travelling to the Royal Blind School, William will require a taxi from the station, we have been informed this will cost just over £2000 over the 2 years.
My husband Leslie and I would be hugely appreciative and grateful should anyone out there feel this cause is worthy of their support. We are now feeling more confident about William's future as we feel we have a direction of how to help William study, learn, develop and grow into an independent young man despite what life has cruelly thrown at him.
Thank you for taking the time to read about our fund raising cause. All being well, William will start this package of support at the beginning of September this year (2018).
Organizer
Laura Kent
Organizer
