New service for sensory impaired people to open in Aberdeen

The contract has been awarded for a new support service for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind or partially sighted in Aberdeen.

Grampian Society for the Blind has secured a three year fixed-term contract to run Aberdeen City Council’s single sensory service.

The new service supporting will go live on August 1, 2010.

GSB Chief Executive Graham Findlay said: “We are pleased to be awarded this contract and look forward to offering this joined up service to the people of Aberdeen.

“The service includes the development of social work and rehabilitation and will be particularly beneficial as many of our service users have both hearing and sight loss.

“We have been running a single sensory service in Moray for some time which has proved very successful and we look forward to doing the same in Aberdeen.”

GSB will offer the additional service of providing a social meeting place for service users at its modern and well-equipped resource centre in John Street.

Aberdeen City Council’s Director of Social Care and Wellbeing Fred McBride said: “It was very important to get this service off the ground as quickly as possible with the minimum of disruption to service users.

“Grampian Society for the Blind has a very experienced team that is already providing an excellent service to their existing clients.”

Last month members of the Aberdeen and North East Deaf Society expressed concerns following confirmation it was to shut, bringing to an end more than one hundred and fifty years of its support for the deaf and hard of hearing in the area.