Aviva Community Fund provided £1,137 of match funding
A vital free service for blind children right now
Kingsclere, England, United Kingdom
Aim
Our Touch to See Books help blind children like Ted share in our sighted world. We need help to continue our free service.
“Living Paintings is a lifeline for us and so many other families of children with a visual impairment, especially now.”
Blind children like Ted, who is 11 and lost his sight as a toddler, already feel excluded from the visual world around them. Without sight the things we take for granted for our children are difficult – joining in with games with their friends and siblings, learning to read and simply accessing their education. The Covid-19 pandemic has hit families like Ted’s especially hard on top of the challenges they were already facing to support their children to lead a normal life. This is especially true for the many blind children who have additional health needs making them particularly vulnerable to the disease.
Your donation of £25 could provide an isolated blind child like Ted with Touch to See books for the next 6 months.
Many services that help these children have stopped as a result of the lockdown.
At Living Paintings we can help now. We create Touch to See books that are used by 7,000 blind and partially sighted children and their families to bring the visual world to life. They are sent out from our completely free postal library which is still fully operational despite the Covid-19 pandemic and are available for any visually impaired child to benefit from in the safety of their own homes.
Our unique books include raised images and immersive audio recordings which are often voiced by professional actors and personalities. This combination of touch and sound makes up for the missing sense of sight and helps blind and partially sighted children to understand and feel part of the world around them.
Mum to four y
ear old Monty told us “The special Touch to See books sent to us by Living Paintings for Monty to enjoy, have been a huge part of his life for the past few years and he adores them. Never have the books been more important, than they are now, during the Coronavirus lockdown. He is unable to access and benefit from the wealth of online resources that are available for fully sighted children and as such the books keep him going, keep him engaged and allow him to enjoy wonderful stories in the same way as his sighted siblings and peers. ”
Currently, Monty’s favourite Touch to See book is The Smeds and The Smoos by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. Monty loves exploring the feely pictures and most of all he loves reading with his big brother because it’s rare to find something that they can do together.
This is what Axel Scheffler himself has to say about Living Paintings and this appeal.
Please support our appeal to help children like Ted and Monty throughout the Covid-19 crisis.
Demand for our service is increasing
The demand for our service is increasing and will continue to do so over the coming months. We are committed to being there for our young library members in these unprecedented and worrying times. Parents of blind and partially sighted children need our books to help continue their children’s education at home during nursery and school closures and periods of self-isolation – as many blind and partially sighted children have additional serious medical conditions they will often need to completely self-isolate during this difficult time.
This is eight year old library member Tayen who is blind and going through chemotherapy. On medical advice she and her brothers are now in isolation, but she was over the moon to receive two boxes of new books from Living Paintings, she wasted no time getting all of the books out! Tayen's mum told us "I can’t explain just how happy those boxes made her this week. Tayen doesn’t cope well with any changes to her routine so has been very upset but she knows what these boxes of books are, they don’t change and I know she felt comforted and reassured by them".
Stepping up our support in challenging times
We are carrying on with our usual service, offering our books to new members who could benefit, and offering extra support to parents of blind and partially sighted children in using our books at home. This increase in need comes at a time when we are struggling to cope with the loss of income from cancelled fundraising events, and the loss of volunteers who usually help send out our books and produce new titles.
That’s why we urgently need your donations today. If we can raise £2,500 we can promise to be there for 100 blind and partially sighted children for the next 6 months.
£25 could pay for one child library member like Tayen to receive as many of our books as they wish over the next six months.
£88 could pay for one copy of a new Touch to See illustrated story book for children.
We understand that not everybody will be able to help us financially, you can also help by spreading the word about our work - we want to reach as many children as we can over the coming months.
Our service transforms lives, especially now, and we need your support today to be able to continue. Please help.
More about Living Paintings
Every day the parents of 4 children will be told that their beloved little one is blind or will become so before they grow up. This devastating diagnosis will leave them wondering how their child will ever be able to join in with story time, follow school work with their sighted peers, and most importantly make friends. As well as the educational impact, blind children face social exclusion as they struggle to join in conversations about the visually informed subjects that are the basis for so much social interaction.
Today there are 26,000 children in the UK living with severe sight loss.
Our books are lent out to 7,000 visually impaired children across the UK through our postal service - they can borrow as many books as they like and the service is completely free. From the littlest fingers through to older children who suffer sight loss, our books are designed for sharing - in class with sighted peers, at home with family and friends.
Our work changes lives and the stats speak volumes: 98% of blind children have reported improved confidence; 98% have attained an increased interest in learning; 95% benefited from an improved confidence in reading while 97% have benefitted from an increase in shared experiences with sighted friends, family and peers.
"Living Paintings enabled our daughter to feel part of the everyday world that everyone else takes for granted. Being blind is incredibly isolating, but the Touch to See books ensured that other children took an interest in how she read. The books give her a positive view of reading and of herself, which is incredibly important for her mental health." Mother of Emily
Living Paintings’ Touch to See books, with their raised images and wonderful, immersive soundtracks provide a unique understanding of the visual world for those who cannot see.
Thank you
This project successfully funded on 22nd July 2020