Charity sets up own course to fill skills gap

The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association is running its own training course to combat the huge shortfall in the number of trained rehabilitation workers.

Research commissioned by the Visual Handicap Group has revealed that at least 900 more trained rehabilitation workers are required to meet the needs of 360,000 blind and partially-sighted people in the UK.

There are currently 500 rehab- ilitation workers in the UK.

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The GDBA’s School of Vision and Rehabilitation Studies, based in Surrey and Glasgow, is offering 35 bursary places for its full-time DipHE in rehabilitation studies. Once qualified, students are expected to work for the charity for a set period of time.

“The bursary programme is there to help attract more people into the profession and the European Social Fund places offer a great opportunity to give unemployed people the chance to get into a rewarding career,” said Tom Muldowney, head of education and training at GDBA’s School of Vision and Rehabilitation Studies.