Welsh Rehabilitation Officers Forum
Our Forum was established by Wales Council of the Blind at the end of 2007 in an attempt to secure a voice for consultation for the Rehabilitation Officers in Wales in the ever-changing visual impairment world whether political, professional or service based. Our membership is open to all qualified Rehabilitation Officers, Assistant Rehabilitation Officers, Student Rehabilitation Officers and Mobility Instructors.
Since the launch of our Forum we have made ourselves available for consultation to Welsh Government, employers, local authorities and also the Third Sector organisations. This has resulted in our direct involvement with the Visual Impairment Service Benchmarking process, the Sensory Impairment National Occupational Standards and the development of our Continuous Professional Development scheme.
Our focus has been to bring about mandatory registration of our profession. This is to ensure that all our members are working to a high standard, are accountable for their work and have ongoing training to develop their skills.
The issue of mandatory registration of the ROVIs in Wales remains high on the agenda for WROF. The code of ethics/professional conduct, the formal job description and the continuous development programme have all been aimed at meeting the registration requirements needed by the Professional Standards Authority, who are the regulators for both Social Care Wales and the Health Care Professional Council. This we hope will bring our profession in line with Social Workers, physiotherapists and Occupational Therapists.
We have been working with our overarching professional body, The Rehabilitation Workers Professional Network (RWPN) to ensure there is a UK wide standard and to implement the infrastructure to record and monitor our CPD. A voluntary register was opened in January 2019 and we feel that this is a huge step forward for our profession.
We believe that all people with a vision impairment or sight loss, must have timely access to Rehabilitation intervention, no matter where they live in Wales.
You can find a list of current Vision Rehabilitation Specialists at Perspectif.