Staffordshire Sight Loss Association formed at the end of 2017 with the aim of providing much needed face to face services for blind and partially sighted people in North Staffordshire. The charity was set up by a group of local people wanting to make a difference in their community.Our founder Suzanne Roberts spent several months reaching out to the local community and listening to views and ideas about whether a new charity was needed and what kind of services should be delivered. She formed a committee with five other local people, all with a shared passion and drive to make North Staffordshire a better place to live for people living with sight loss.

Photograph of our Chair Andrea talking to 2 members of our social group, Jackie and Paul. Jackie is stood up and Paul and Andrea are sat down

We registered with the Charity Commission on 31st January 2018, secured our first funding from Seedbed Christian Charity in April 2018 and began delivering our first services in May 2018.

Over the next 18 months as a small team of volunteers we provided advice and information around independent living, support with applications for welfare benefits and concessions along with social and peer support groups, leading to many positive outcomes for those supported.

We also held our first events including our first Annual Awareness Day which brought together 29 local and national organisations who came to share information about their services and to demonstrate equipment and technology. More than 100 members of the community attended and the event was a great success.

Since 2020 much of our work has been funded by the National Lottery Community Fund through our Independence & Wellbeing Project (2020 til 2022) and our Independent and Connected Communities which started in February of this year and will take us up to 2025. These projects have had a transformational impact on our organisation, They have enabled us to hire a team of staff, rent office space, open our Resource Centire and deliver a range of community-based services. We are very thankful to the National Lottery and players of the National Lottery as well as our other funders and supporters. Please see our ‘Thank yous for 2022’ page for more information about all of the people we would like to thank: https://ssla.org.uk/news-and-events/thank-yous/

On the 31st of January of this year, we have been a registered charity for 5 years and we hope to be here offering community-led services for as long as our community needs us.

You can find details of all of our services in the ‘services’ section of our website and find dates of upcoming events and activities in our ‘events calendar’ however if you have any questions at all please do not hesitate to Get in touch.