Association for Blind grant to help children

The Association for the Blind has received a $24,000 grant from the Roper St. Francis Physicians Endowment to fund its ReFocus on Children program.

The Association for the Blind is a nonprofit organization that serves and supports people with visual needs.

The ReFocus on Children program provides eye care education, digital eye screenings and, if needed, professional examinations and prescription glasses to about 1,000 4- and 5-year-old Title I schoolchildren.

More specifically, the funding will allow the Association for the Blind to use a school-based outreach approach, using a state-of-the-art device to perform vision screenings on children in their classrooms to determine the need for prescription eye glasses and the presence of eye disorders.

Children not passing the screening will be given a full eye exam by a licensed optometrist on site.

Those needing prescription glasses will be provided glasses delivered to their school by an optician at no charge to the child's family.

Children showing symptoms of needing further eye care will be referred to pediatric ophthalmologists.

Undiagnosed vision issues pose a barrier to literacy, social development and education.

Sixty percent of Lowcountry children enter kindergarten without having a professional eye exam, and 26 percent of the 270 children in the 2010 ReFocus on Children pilot did not pass the initial screening.

For information on Association for the Blind, call Olivia French at 723-6915 or visit www.associationfortheblindsc.org.