Case study My Guide

What were your organisation’s motivations for developing this service?

Primarily this was just too good an opportunity to miss.  We’ve been doing ‘awareness training’ for decades.  This was an opportunity to update our course and the feedback was far better that any we’d had before.  We think that this is because the new training allows people to work as a group, all the questions were either directed at the trainers or at the whole group and people were able to make mistakes without feeling embarrassed.

This is also the single BEST incidence of partnership working we’ve ever had.  Guide Dogs were genuinely looking to us, the local societies, for absolute equality.  And when it comes down to it this is about the service users. This program is good for them and that is reason enough.

What are your goals for the service?

To increase the opportunity for service users to get out and about, in other words improve their quality of life. We’re also hoping to increase the profile of our agency as we are tiddly compared to the big guys and we should sing out more. It’s also a great opportunity to improve the skills of staff and volunteers as we view training as a motivating technique. Ultimately we also hope that this will lead to an increase in the skill base of the wider population and raise their awareness of sight loss

What experience does your organisation have in working with volunteers?

Loads, we’ve been doing this for years.  We have some really good volunteers.  However, this doesn’t necessarily make us good at it – we still lose a lot of volunteers, not all are well trained, and not all ‘enjoy’ the process, so we understand we have to continue to work on their development.

Volunteers for us generally are looking for social interaction, a feel-good factor.  We’re looking for resources to increase our ability to help people with sight loss.  We need to marry those two sets of expectations.

What resources have you committed to delivering the service? (financial and people)

We’re lucky to have a Volunteer Co-ordinator and she will therefore be the biggest pull on our resources, around 2 days a week.  We also have a VOLUNTEER Volunteer Co-ordinator, so that’s another approximately 2 days a week although they don’t cost us much.  We haven’t yet got the project flying, and it will undoubtedly take up more resource.  But I would expect to see benefits that we can offset against other things.  For example we have an extant lottery project that requires that we train 500 people in the community – it’s a no-brainer that we will therefore be putting this training down against that.

What have you achieved with you’re my Guide service so far? What is your greatest achievement so far?

We trained 35 people on the first Level 1 course,  since then we’ve expanded the training to include 15 students, 12 police cadets and a further 12 volunteers.

Individual examples include helping someone that was  in a car accident and unable to use her dog for a few months.  We also helped a young student to attend mainstream university confidently. And we we’ve also been helping run the ‘special eyes’ project, training Special Police Constables to work with isolated visually impaired individuals.

How do you promote the service?

We’re still in the pilot stage, but so far it has been cascaded to all rehabilitation officers, social workers, and other stakeholders.  We plan to ‘advertise’ in our newsletter and at our open events when we have a wider cohort of people trained.

Where have referrals for the service come from?

Word of mouth, from rehabilitation officers and sometimes we just spot ‘em.  Someone will come into the resource centre, and in the telling of their life story you feel they could be helped.

How have you recruited volunteers for the My Guide service?

Generally from existing methods, so posters, adverts, events, colleges etc.  The nice thing about this is the focus it gives (i.e., we don’t say ‘we want volunteers’, we say ‘would you like free training …..’

What training have you given these volunteers about working with your organisation?

At the beginning of the volunteer journey, we tend to give what most people would call Awareness Training, and we offer specific training depending on the role.

What training have you provided for the My Guide volunteers to deliver the service?

We’ve provided Level 1 training and there after, a tailored package to help get them through to level 2 if they want it.

Which parts of the My Guide programme have you had difficulties with?  Why do you think this has been the case?

Probably the single most challenging issue for us has been the fear that Guide Dogs are going to steal our volunteers.   However, if the client doesn’t care who delivers the service, then it is imperative that as an agency we get over this hang-up. As long as it is a really good service it doesn’t matter who delivers it and Guide Dogs is seeking to improve collaboration, not take over.

Lack of money is always an issue. On a local level either ask the Sighted Guide Ambassador to help you identify possible funding sources, or do a pitch to your local council as it improves community skills, or simply cut the cost as much as you can – we’ve asked volunteers to bring biscuits before, and it rightly highlights how poor we are.

Has the My Guide service changed your service user profile?

No.  We still mainly see elderly ladies with late onset dual sensory loss.  However we do now see younger and more active volunteers which is good as we are rapidly expanding our services and need to keep developing new ‘assistants’ to help us deliver these services.