The “re-vamped” Bladon Low Vision Centre is now up and running and working extremely smoothly with both our members and staff making very positive comments as to how well our reconfiguration and refurbishment has worked.

At the end of my report in last year’s review I commented that, whilst Staffordshire Blind found itself in a healthy financial state, that the general economy was heading for extremely difficult times. Those words of concern have been followed by the deepest worldwide recession since the 1930’s.

The recession has affected us in several ways. Firstly, the performance and value of our investments have fallen very sharply. Secondly, the generous donations or bequests that we can normally expect during a financial year have also appeared to be hit as everyone’s financial situation is affected and thirdly, the ability to raise funds from Primary Care Trusts and other local and national resources has become ever more challenging as their funds have also been restricted.

We still remain financially viable with significant reserves and investments but we must look to and reconsider our future to ensure that we can continue to offer the tremendous quality of services to the community and our members.

I believe that the next twelve months are going to be challenging and crucial to the long term survival of our charity and that all of us must look openly and carefully as to how we can best protect the services that we do offer to our members.

Despite these difficult times, we have continued to receive tremendous support from all the volunteers across the county and once again I would like to take this opportunity of thanking them for their help and dedication is supporting the needs of our blind and partially sighted friends.

I must also commend all our staff, not only for their hard work and dedication, but also to their patience, flexibility and understanding during these difficult times.