This year we celebrated our 225th anniversary. 

For 225 years we’ve pushed towards an inclusive society, where people with learning disabilities, autism and sight loss can live, love, thrive and belong.  

It’s been 225 years of driving change forward.  

225 years of challenging what society believes people with disabilities can do and achieve.  

225 years of seeing and recognising ability and ambition alongside people we support. 

Our anniversary was a historic year for our charity, reaching more people than ever before. 

Our hard work was marked by a sensational run of individual and team award wins for Heather House, Behaviour Consultant Nathan Bunyan, our Marketing, Digital and Communications team, and two wins for our Eye Care Team! 

I’ve loved seeing the SeeAbility anniversary spirit shared with communities and the wider public. We’ve celebrated in our homes, with barbecues and street parties, but we’ve also celebrated on the Good Morning Britain sofas, with the headline 24 Peaks challenge hitting the national news. We’ve celebrated by dipping into inspiring stories from our archives, but we’ve also celebrated with a high-profile event at the House of Lords, hosted by Lord Blunkett. From local to national, from past to present, we’ve highlighted the golden thread of ambition that has always run through our charity. 

That ambition will always drive us. We have much to be proud of - over 225 years, but also in the past year alone. We’ve shown that, despite the challenges social care continues to face, we thrive in the face of adversity. It’s where we learn our biggest lessons, bond together, and grow as individuals, as a team, and as a charity. 

Lisa Hopkins, CEO 

Our long term aim is to create inclusive communities where everyone can live equally. We do this by creating more opportunities for people with learning disabilities, autism and sight loss to live, love, thrive and belong. 

Our social care and innovative programmes will result in: 

At SeeAbility we combine specialist expertise with determined ambition to make sure everyone has the best chance at achieving their great expectations. 

Everyone we support through social care tells us what is important to them through their Quality of Life web. This capture people’s experiences and expectations across different areas of life – relationships, home, opportunities, health, and so on – so we can work together with them to achieve their goals. 

This active encouragement can have remarkable results. Read Giban’s story, for instance, to see how we worked with him to create a healthy eating and fitness plan, so he no longer relies on insulin to manage his diabetes. 

We’re constantly striving to improve our support in our homes and supported living services. 90% of our support teams have now had active support training - a way of supporting people to have true meaning, purpose and control in their lives. 

Our annual satisfaction surveys continue to show we are making strong progress. 94% of people we support and 91% of family and friends said our support was good or very good. 

In 2024-25 we retained existing and won new contracts in Oxfordshire via tender, and were awarded our first contract with Camden Borough Council supporting someone moving from hospital. Through SeeAbility, more people with high support needs have found somewhere to call home, with high quality, personalised support. 

People with learning disabilities are 10 times more likely to have serious sight problems. For children that goes up to 28 times. 

In a landmark year for our eye care team, the new government committed to rolling out the special schools eye care service. In November our influencing led to it being legally established, and in March, NHS England allocated £12 million to bring the service to all special schools. 

We’re excited to see the impact of this life-changing service on more than 160,000 children. Ellie is just one of those children, who no longer needs to go through challenging hospital appointments to get the eye care she needs. 

We continue to influence policy for an equal right to sight, with eight MP visits, including a visit from Minister for Health and Social Care Stephen Kinnock to a special school eye care service at an uncertain time for the service. 

Our Eye Care Champions celebrated five years in their roles by becoming published authors in the peer reviewed British Journal of Learning Disabilities, showcasing the unmatched value of lived experience in improving healthcare.  

With the weight of their lived experiences behind them, our Eye Care Champions continue to influence the NHS, steering the commissioning and use of specialist community ‘Easy Eye Care’ pathways. 

Our excellence has been recognised, winning Team of the Year at the RNIB See Differently Awards, and our Senior Dispensing Optician Martyn Howlett won Optician Awards’ Dispensing Optician of the Year. 

This year Ready, Willing and Able, our supported employment programme, guided 34 people along their employment journey, with seven securing paid employment and five becoming self-employed. In total, people we have supported to find a career earnt over £130k this year. 

We have ambitious plans to double our coaching capacity in the next year, with new hubs in London and Oxfordshire. 

Our Listen Up! team also had a bumper year, influencing over 6,800 people, while ensuring people with learning disabilities were empowered to vote in the general election. In the run up to the election, they held workshops and talks across SeeAbility to encourage people to vote. This had a huge impact, with 68 people we’re supporting going out to vote, many for the first time. 

The team were also involved in creating Learning Disability England's Good Lives Manifesto, a national influencing project consisting of six key pledges election candidates could make to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities. 

Across SeeAbility we maintained our focus on accessibility. We partnered with the Eurovision Song Contest and official partners Baileys in 2024, providing lived experience expertise and recommendations to enhance inclusivity. This included audio descriptions for each act, which were shared on Spotify alongside the live broadcast. 

Our Marketing, Digital and Communications team won the Accessible Comms Award at the Inspiring Communicator Awards 2024 for their accessibility work over the last year. 

It’s true that the challenges across the social care and charity sectors, remain signficant. But in response, we're choosing to live in ‘the Spirit of Possibility’.

Possibility. Because we know that even in adversity, we continue to learn, to grow, and to thrive together. 

We will continue expanding our social care work, so more people than ever can live, love, thrive and belong, through our support. But while we want to grow outwards, we also want to grow internally, focusing our internal processes on driving ambition and championing innovation. Safeguarding remains a central focus. 

Our Listen Up! team will continue to keep people with learning disabilities in the spotlight, so they cannot be ignored by policymakers and influencers. They will particularly look to influence the social care commission and upcoming welfare reforms. 

Following our success in influencing NHS England to roll out the special schools eye care service, we are hopeful of taking on more contracts for eye care work in London schools. We also continue promoting eye care for adults with learning disabilities through easy eye care pathways. 

Our supported employment programme, Ready, Willing and Able, is going through an exciting transition. Over the next year we will more than double our current coaching capacity, through the generosity of donors during our Big Give Christmas Challenge. We will see a coach join us in London and another start in Oxfordshire. 

Central to all of this are our colleagues, who bring passion and expertise to everything they do. We will continue finding new ways to recognise and reward their brilliant work. 

Our 225th anniversary year may be over, but the inspiration we took from it will drive our spirit of possibility, so this next year can be as ambitious, innovative and daring as any year before it.