The Health and Social Care Act 2022 has made it a requirement of all CQC regulated health and care providers that all their staff – clinical and administrative - receive mandatory learning disability and autism awareness training by people with lived experience. Health Education England has developed the Oliver McGowan mandatory learning disability and autism training programme to this end.
 
However, as the optical sector is regulated by the GOC, we are missing out on this training despite the known barriers to eye care this group experience whilst being 10 times more likely to have a significant visual problem. With Health Education England’s support, SeeAbility is exploring the need for this training in the optical sector
 
SeeAbility is delivering Tier 1 training to optical professionals and non-clinical practice staff, including reception and optical assistant colleagues. Reception staff are usually the first point of contact but may be unaware of how the sight test can be made accessible including to patients who cannot access the letter chart.
 
We are grateful to Thomas Pocklington Trust for their support enabling SeeAbility to be able to offer this training free of charge to the optical sector.
 
There are two parts to Tier 1 training –
 

1. You must complete E-Learning on The Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training On Learning Disabilities & Autism before you attend the webinar.
2. Attend the live one hour webinar which we have logged with the GOC for one interactive point. The webinar is delivered by a trio of trainers including trainers with lived experience of learning disabilities and autism.

 
As part of our evaluation, we will ask to follow up with a percentage of participants to carry out evaluation structured interviews / focus groups.