If you have any worries about your eyes, changes to how you see or problems with your glasses, you should not wait. Please phone your usual optician or optometrist for their advice NOW.

Optometrists are prioritising urgent, emergency and essential eye care services. As they now have cleaning and PPE procedures in place, they are also able to provide some routine eye care so contact them for further advice if you are due an eye test.

You should call your optician or optometrist if you have:

• changes to your vision
• a painful or red eye
• broken or lost glasses where you need a replacement pair to be able to see
• a problem with contact lenses

If you are told to go to the opticians and you think you have any coronavirus symptoms, tell your practice, but do not visit them.

Most eye clinics in hospitals are providing routine appointments and ensuring that it is safe for everyone to attend, sometimes online appointments are being offered. If you receive an appointment you should attend if you can, if you are shielding contact the clinic for their advice.

More information on eye care during the coronavirus crisis from the College of Optometrists

More information on the lockdown, what you can do to keep well and stay connected, visit our coronavirus support hub.

Watch TV Presenter and SeeAbility patron Helen Fospero chat to SeeAbility Eye Care Champion Joanne Kennedy about her role at SeeAbility and how people with learning disabilities can take care of their eyes in the Covid world.

Our Eye Care Champions give out their top tips for looking after your eyes for people with learning disabilities during all the changes we have seen with the Covid pandemic.

Advice for people supporting someone with a learning disability or autism

We know how important it is for everyone with learning disabilities and autism to have regular sight tests, because they are 10 times more likely to have eye problems and because they may struggle to communicate changes or issues.

We all have a responsibility to look for signs and symptoms of eyesight changes in people we support, so that we can take action and prevent them from unnecessarily losing their sight during this time. Our free resources can help.

Our easy-to-use Functional Vision Assessment (FVA) tool helps to simplify this process

A Functional Vision Assessment gives an indication of how well someone uses their sight in everyday life. It's designed to be filled in by someone who knows the person well, like a carer, supporter or learning disability professional. As we're all likely to be staying around the same few people at the moment and spending more time together, there will be more opportunities to make observations about how people are using their vision.

Using our free FVA tool, you can get an indication of what a person might see or have difficulty seeing. An FVA can be very useful before someone attends a sight test or eye clinic appointment to identify potential problems. The observations made from using the FVA tool should be shared at someone’s next eye appointment to help them get the best support.  If the assessment suggests there may be a new problem with their eyes or vision call your optician/optometrist.

View the FVA tool and simple guides on how to use it.

If you have any queries or need further help please contact us at  [email protected].