Sudbury-based rehabilitation worker Jeanette Spence has helped people from all over Suffolk

When Jeanette Spence qualified as a home teacher for the blind one of the challenges she faced in her exam was making a perfect cane-work basket.

Today, as she marks 55 years helping sight-impaired people in Suffolk, the service she has seen evolve over decades is a world away from the job she started in the late 1960s.

Jeanette now works for Sensing Change which provides a range of support to adults affected by loss of vision, hearing, or both, on behalf of Suffolk County Council.

Caroline Carr, head of service at Sensing Change, described her as an expert in the field of sight loss who has helped shape the organisation’s strong reputation, adding: “Her 55 years service is an amazing achievement. We all feel very honoured to be part of that.”

The focus for those losing their sight has shifted from teaching handicrafts and Braille to enabling them to live safely and make the most of the vision they have left. “The overarching thing now is safety in the home and in the community,” says Jeanette whose current role is vision rehabilitation officer.

In all that time she has not been tempted to swap jobs. “I like working with people and seeing the outcome you get for the person, seeing them regain their independence. It might be something quite small. Someone who was not able to do things independently or safely in the home or outside, can now do it. It’s very satisfying.

“I’ve met some really interesting people. The majority are older but not always. We also help young people who have faced a lot of trauma in their lives. You have got to understand people, and the emotional and psychological impact of sight loss.

“When a consultant says ‘there is nothing more we can do I’m going to register you as blind’ it’s like being hit on the head with a mallet, and we can refer people for counselling.”

It might be many years since Jeanette had to call on her basket weaving skills - but that exam piece has stood the test of time. It looks like new and serves as her sewing basket, Not, she readily confesses, that she does much sewing, admitting: “That’s probably why it’s survived so long.”

For the past 44 years she has lived in Sudbury with her husband Colin, an ex-chairman of Suffolk County Council who also had a long local government career in education and social work.

She grew up in Essex before moving to Suffolk with her parents Dolly and Sid de Naeyer in the mid-1960s. “I was born in my parents’ front room in Woodford in 1947. I went to a secondary modern school, left when I was 16, and went to work in a tax office in London,” she said.

“Then I thought I’d like to do something different and applied for teacher training college, and in the interim I got a job as an unqualified teacher at Tudor Road School in Sudbury.

“I decided teaching wasn’t really for me, then I saw a job advertised, home teacher for the blind.” She applied to the Southern Region Association for the Blind for a place at college in London,

“The qualification I had then was so different to the job I do now.” she says. “That course involved teaching people handicrafts - I learned four crafts and how to teach them including rush seating and cane work. We also did touch typing, Braille, and another reading system called Moon.”

“I qualified and got a job with the old West Suffolk County Council. I was based in Manor House, near the old Shire Hall in Bury St Edmunds.”

More training followed to teach outdoor and mobility orientation skills, to make sure people could go out safely with a cane or white stick. That meant going back to college in London, and learning how it felt to live with sight loss.

“We had to wear a sleep mask and experience what it was like to move through the environment being unable to see. We did the training on the streets of London, with all the traffic, noise and crowds, with a sighted trainer. We also had to go on the Underground.”

When Suffolk County Council was created in 1974 she became part of the disability team based at Shire Hall in Bury, and progressed to the role of senior rehabilitation officer responsible for other workers and their development.

Meanwhile she and Colin had met at Sudbury Baptist Church, where they are still regular worshippers. They married in 1970, and celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary on September 5.

Their son Martin was born in 1980. He went to Oxford University where he met his wife Molly, and is now a professor of history at Cornerstone University in Michigan, with three children aged 10, eight and six.

As Jeanette’s career moved forward she saw numerous changes. For many years she visited people in their homes to assess their needs, mostly in the west of the county from Mildenhall, Newmarket and Haverhill, to Bury, Sudbury, and sometimes Hadleigh.

“Originally we used to deal with children as well, but when the two directorates in SCC split into adult and children’s services I stayed with the adults, aged 18-plus,” she said.

She also got involved in a bowls club for visually-impaired players. “They played every week at Haverhill Bowls Club and they used to play sighted teams and win,” she recalls.

“All the handicrafts work had stopped. That was part of the evolution of the service.”

Technology brought another big change in the way cases are recorded. “When I started it was pen and paper in a little notebook. Now it’s all computerised.

“In the job people don’t just have sight problems. They can have long term health conditions, disabilities, or mental health issues, or learning difficulties.

“It’s not a package you transfer from one person to another. An assessment is based on the person’s needs. You get the common thread of sight loss but everyone is different. We can never make assumptions.

“We don’t provide care, that’s done by care workers. We put in a rehabilitation plan to enable people with sight loss to be independent and confident and safe within their home and in the community.”

She says that outside, electric bikes and cars are a challenge for anyone with sight loss because they are so quiet, especially on roads where there is no controlled crossing. Ordinary bikes can be a problem as well, especially if people ride on the pavement.

In the home, important things include kitchen skills and safety, improving lighting, and providing magnifiers.

“We don’t don’t teach Braille or Moon any more because technology has revolutionised communications. You can now get so many devices that can, for instance, read things to you. It’s moving on all the time.

“We keep up contact with people as long as it’s needed. For instance with mobility, sometimes as confidence builds they might want to go further and to do more.

“We make a rehabilitation plan so they know, and we know, the direction of travel. We tell people to come back to us if their sight changes.”

They can also signpost people to other sources of help like benefits, and charities like Guide Dogs, or Suffolk Sight whose services include technology support and social activities.

“A lot of our referrals come from eye clinics, but we take referrals from any source,” said Jeanette. “We work with people to make the maximum use of their remaining vision. We have to know about all the different eye conditions.

“Most people have a degree of vision even if registered as severely sight impaired. One of the most important things is the right lighting. It can make a real difference. LED is very good, but it is important to have a diffuser shade, they need the light, not the glare.”

She is a big fan of audio books, and talking newspapers provided by charities like Newstalk, because while magnifiers and different techniques might enable people to read a certain amount, it would not be reading for pleasure.

Jeanette currently works one day a week from home, making triage phone calls to anywhere in the county, and also attends team meetings.

“When we get a referral we ring people up to get a feel for what they need and what support they might have. But we still treat them as an independent person.

“I triage calls, assessing which are the most urgent. It’s all about risk, safety and independence. I share the job with a colleague who also does one day a week.

“I would ask things like how do you get on in the kitchen, can you see the cooker controls, and have you burnt yourself, or find out if they’ve had a fall. Then we record it on the case notes of the person, and notify the senior who would decide the priorities.

“Referrals are coming in all the time. There is quite a huge demand and I think the better service you provide the more demand you get. Word gets around.

“It has been a very interesting career - at times it’s challenging but I wouldn’t have wanted to do anything else. And I have made some good friends through my job,” said Jeanette, whose off duty pursuits include online scrabble and gardening.

Caroline says, “Jeanette’s colleagues at Sensing Change have enormous respect for her, both professionally and personally and she is a very highly valued member of staff.

“Throughout her 55 years service, Jeanette has acquired a huge amount of knowledge, skills and experience and is considered by all who know her to be an expert in the field of sight loss.

“She has mentored, supervised and supported staff, from students to newly qualified and experienced workers and always strives to pass her valued knowledge and skills onto others.

“Over the years, Jeanette has played a huge part in the development of services to people with sight loss in Suffolk and her contribution to Sensing Change has helped to shape the strong reputation it has today.

“Jeanette’s commitment to her work with people with sight loss is unquestionable and she goes above and beyond to provide a high quality service to all her customers.”