Patient Stories

Visiting Disability Service with Scope

What is the Visiting Disability Service?

The Visiting Disability Service (VDS) is a crucial component of ACO Eye Health’s broader Outreach Services, providing eye care services to patients with physical and intellectual disabilities delivered in safe spaces, within community residential units or day facilities. First established in 1997, ACO Eye Health has developed great partnerships with support organisations such as Scope, DoAbility and Life Without Barriers, to deliver optometry care to people with disabilities. 

The demand for optometry services for people with disabilities has increased significantly over the last 10 years and we are committed to removing any barriers to accessing care. 

About Scope

Founded by a group of families with children living with cerebral palsy, Scope is one of Australia’s largest providers of disability support services. Its Supported Independent Living (SIL) arm, Home@Scope, empowers people with disabilities to live more independently. 

ACO Eye Health has regularly visited the ‘Helen St’ Home@Scope site in St Albans for over ten years. Vicki Hearn (pictured), the House Supervisor at Helen St, works with a dedicated team to ensure residents have access to a wide range of services including, but not limited to, high quality health care.

Most residents at the site face complex medical conditions, including poor vision. When discussing the wider implications Vicki says, “When a person has no verbal means of communication, and this is coupled with poor vision, it has a detrimental impact on a person’s quality of life and on their ability to communicate effectively with others. An inability to communicate effectively can lead to other areas of concern.” Regular eye exams can help detect these vision impairments, provide appropriate support and diagnose other medical conditions associated with poor eye health. 

 “When a person has no verbal means of communication, and this is coupled with poor vision, it has a detrimental impact on a person’s quality of life and on their ability to communicate”

- Vicki Hearn, Scope

The support staff note that it can be challenging to encourage residents to attend appointments externally and ACO’s onsite care makes residents feel safe as they are in a familiar setting. 

Vicki points out that accessing optometric services in the community may not always be practical for many of the residents, “People with a disability often become anxious in unfamiliar surroundings and are less likely to cooperate during an optometric examination carried out at an optometry practice, making it difficult to obtain an accurate result from the examination.” 

ACO’s collaboration with Home@Scope is helping to ensure that individuals with disabilities receive the support they need for optimal vision. Partnerships such as these are essential for the extended reach of ACO’s outreach services ensuring positive health outcomes for all vulnerable individuals in the community.

A day at Home@Scope

Dr Josephine Li, General Manager Rural VES and Outreach Programs at ACO Eye Health has worked with the residents at Helen St for over ten years building a great rapport with both staff and residents. 

Knowing that she will spend the day moving around the home, Josephine sets up her equipment in the dining room, the place that is most accessible to everyone. As each patient Josephine examines has complex communication needs, she must modify standard testing techniques to meet their specific requirements. This requires a very different set-up than one would find in an everyday consultation room and is quite different to most of the ACO Outreach care.

With no set testing area, Josephine must remain flexible in her approach and patiently move with residents through the house with mobile equipment, to accommodate their needs in the moment and ensure that they feel at ease. In addition to difficulty communicating with patients, there are often various emotional and physical considerations when providing care in this setting. 

With such complex needs, collaboration between optometrists and support workers is essential for a successful and safe assessment with positive patient experience. While some residents are willing to do the tests, others require more persuasion, which is when Vicki steps in. Adopting methods to suit the individual needs of the patient is vital as they frequently go without essential eye care as this cannot be supported elsewhere. 

Recalling a consult when Josephine diagnosed a resident with high intraocular pressure, which could have led to vision loss, Vicki says, “Josephine diagnosed a serious medical condition associated with a build-up of pressure in the eyes. The resident had no verbal means of communication and he did not indicate at any time that he was experiencing any form of discomfort. He was immediately taken to the eye and ear hospital for urgent medical treatment. Because of her patience and expertise in supporting people with special needs, Josephine was able to pinpoint the medical condition and make an accurate diagnosis.”