SERVICES

COMMUNITY BASED SERVICES

Community Based Services

Community Based Services addresses the growing need for comprehensive rehabilitation services to blind or visually impaired adults in a community setting (home, senior center, residential facility). Community Based Services is unique in providing counseling and rehabilitation services to qualified adults in Metro Atlanta who would have no alternative but to relocate to a family residence or a nursing home without this intervention. The result of these services is often the reduction of dependency and the promotion of self-sufficiency and self-esteem.

Community Based Services provides instruction in the following skills:

1. Mobility Training: Safety practices, proper use of sighted guide, self-protection techniques needed to prevent accidents and physical injury in familiar or unfamiliar surroundings, special training to move about independently using a white cane on sidewalks or bus/rail travel, orientation to senior centers and other public facilities, e.g., shopping malls or grocery stores.

2. Personal Care: Medication management and identification.

3. Labeling: labeling canned goods, electronics (remotes, home phones), medication bottles, appliances, etc.

4. Communication Skills: Use of low vision aids, adapted watches/clocks, telephone dialing (including how to summon help in emergencies), and Talking Book players provided to blind persons by the Library of Congress.

5. Money Management: Identifying money/coins, folding techniques, money identifiers (i.e. iBill).

6. Maintenance and Care of Home: Cleaning techniques and organization skills.

7. Case management services: Ongoing counseling to the client and family, focusing on the adjustment to blindness and the impact on the family. Referrals are made to appropriate community resources prior to and during the instructional period as needed.

*Please note there is currently a wait list for Orientation and Mobility services in the home.

If you or someone you know could benefit from these services, please call the Center for the Visually Impaired at 404-875-9011.

Project Independence is a vision program for adults 55 and over (also referred to as the Older Blind Program). It is administered by the Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation Agency (GVRA) and provides services that can help visually impaired people.