Giving a voice to the employment support sector

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RNIB Toolkit

This employment assessment toolkit is the result of work carried out by a team from RNIB, Action for Blind People, and the University of Birmingham. It has been developed as part of a research and development project called ENABLER, which was funded by the Big Lottery Fund.

What does the toolkit involve?

The toolkit enables employment professionals who work with blind and partially sighted people to gain a clear understanding of what their clients' aspirations are in relation to employment, and what types of support and development are needed to help fulfil these aspirations. The toolkit involves two related approaches:

  • Firstly, the questions contained within the toolkit are designed to generate assessment information, which helps the employment professional and client to design an appropriate action plan. The toolkit covers areas which are often identified by blind and partially sighted people as being barriers to gaining paid or voluntary work, such as mobility and accessing computers. It also includes some questions which provide important context information such as your clients' level of vision and general health.
  • Secondly, some of the questions in the toolkit have been identified as having a useful screening function. What this means is that answers to some of the questions can be combined to enable your client to be assigned to one of five levels. The assigned level can be helpful to communicate to your clients the steps they need to take which will lead to paid or voluntary work, and it can also help communicate progress which your clients have made over time.

The toolkit is made up of two documents: 

  • RNIB Employment Assessment Toolkit: The assessment tool is a set of questions which will help you to gain a clear understanding of what the person's aspirations and abilities are in relation to employment, and what types of support and development are needed to help fulfil these.
  • RNIB Employment Action Plan: The action plan development document enables you to combine answers to selected questions in order to assign the person to one of five levels. The assigned level can be helpful to communicate to blind and partially sighted people the steps they need to take, which will lead to paid or voluntary work. It can also help communicate progress they have made over time.

Full details of how to use the toolkit are given within the documents. These can be found in various formats on the right hand side of this page.