PROFILE: Judith Wood uses her own sight loss experience to help others

Visually impaired for more than four decades and totally blind for the last three years, Judith Wood, senior sight advisor and counsellor at Oxfordshire Association for the Blind (OAB), has a better idea than most what her patients are going through.

The 69-year-old, who lives in Littleworth near Faringdon, lost the majority of her sight following a car accident in 1973 aged just 24.

“There were none of the safety features they have now with shatter proof glass so as the passenger I went straight through the windshield,” she said.

“I lost one eye immediately and there was so much glass in the other that the doctors initially thought I would lose my sight completely.

“I was so young and I thought I was never going to be able to play tennis or ride a horse again.

“The big one was they told I would never nurse again, which is what I had wanted to do since I was three-years-old.”

The mother-of-one trained in London before fulfilling a lifelong ambition of joining the RAF’s nursing service, known as the Princess Mary unit.

It was while working at airbase RAF Walton, near Aylesbury in Berkshire, that she was injured.

She credits the RAF with giving her the support she needed to train in psychology and become a counsellor while she recovered.

Despite the initial prognosis, after weeks of painful clearing of glass from her remaining eye she eventually regained a level of sight that allowed her to keep working in the job she loved and it was a role she continued for another 17 years.

Things changed again for Ms Wood, who was now living in Oxfordshire, overnight.

“As I slept a piece of glass still in my eye from the accident worked its way across my cornea scratching it completely," she explained.

“I woke up that morning and I couldn’t see anything again. It was devastating."

Suddenly able to only make out shadows she came into contact with OAB and people struggling as they adjusted to a situation she was experiencing for a second time.

She said: “I was attending appointments in the old Radcliffe Infirmary and it was making me so upset seeing people not know what to do as they navigated the news about their sight loss.

“Given my background with the psychology and counselling, which I hadn't really used since I was 24, as well as my previous experience with sight loss, I felt I was in a good position to help.”

Since then, she has tirelessly worked to make sure nobody with visual impairments can slip through the net.

In her 25 years at the OAB she has established a full-time sight advisory service at Oxford Eye Hospital in the John Radcliffe Hospital as well as the country’s only specialist counselling service for people affected by sight loss.

She began the service by providing emotional support to those who needed it and by signposting people to local services.

She also advocated on behalf of patients, accompanying them back to the doctor’s room to ensure that their condition had been properly explained to them.

“I started by just asking the OAB if I could hand out leaflets about the service as so many people didn’t even know it was available,” she said.

“After a few months doing that they offered me a full time position and I haven’t stopped since.”

The system Ms Wood put in place is now a joined-up and comprehensive mental health service for visually impaired people and their carers, and has a direct impact on the lives of thousands of people.

The busy professional has around 500 in-person appointments each year and provides telephone counselling.

In addition, the sight advisory service that she established has around 600 visitors annually.

She said her own experience of visual impairment gives her a special connection with her clients.

She said: “There is a level of comfort when they find out I'm blind.When people first discover they are losing their sight they are often heartbroken and don’t know what they will be able to do anymore.

“Many fear they will have to give up everything they love.”

Ms Wood, who lost the last of her sight in 2015, said everything needs to be readjusted.

She explained: “There is danger everywhere when you leave the house and a city like Oxford is not always easy to navigate for the visually impaired.

“But I think when they meet me they understand what is still possible and they know I understand the emotions they are experiencing.

“The mental toll it all takes is not something that was appreciated in the past.”

Her tireless work was recognised with two prestigious awards this summer which saw her head down to London to pick up a pair of national prizes.

Ms Wood won a BBC Radio 4 ‘All in the Mind’ award in the professional category – one of three winners chosen out of more than 1,000 nominations.

Nathan Tree, 29, from Wheatley, nominated Ms Wood for the mental health prize after she helped him come to terms with his sight loss.

She also attended a ceremony at the Palace of Westminster in July where she received a British Citizen Award for services to healthcare.

The Oxford professional was one of just 29 people to be recognised in the awards, set up in 2015 to recognise ‘exceptional individuals who work tirelessly and selflessly to make a positive impact on society’.

“Seeing so many mental health specialists at the radio four award ceremony made me see how far things have come even since I started,” she said.

"We seem so much more able to talk about mental health than we were in the past which is such a good things for people dealing with sight loss."

As she is now in her late sixties, she said in the next couple of years the time would come to bring in someone else to help with her workload.

Ms Wood has no plans to retire, however, adding: "You hear some older actors saying they want to die on the stage and I feel the same way about my work.

“I intend to keep on going as long as I can. The only thing that would stop me is my memory going.

"Being blind I have to memorise patient's notes as I don’t like to rely on a Dictaphone for privacy reasons so it’s even more important than it would be usually.”

She said her work had been so important to her, not just for the help she provided to others, but by providing herself with a way to feel useful following her second time dealing with going blind.

“I will always be grateful that the OAB was there to give me purpose at a time when I was really vulnerable," she said.

“They provide everything from the counselling I do to IT classes and without them things for visually impaired people in Oxfordshire would be in a lot worse shape.”

For more information about the OAB and the support it can provide to visually impaired people visit oxeyes.org.uk