Focuses on how we can all work together to facilitate a more inclusive world for children and young people with vision impairment.
Specialist resources and sensory support service documents
Working with partners across the sector and the UK, we have developed a suite of PowerPoint resources focusing on the CFVI’s key areas. These resources can be used by specialists working with Children and Young People with Vision Impairment (CYPVI) in the field of VI education to support training to key stakeholders and to encourage and support the embedding of the CFVI within all settings.
On this page
- CFVI specialist resources
- Getting started with the CFVI: Sharing practice and experiences
- Introducing the CFVI to non-specialists
- An introduction to the CFVI for non-specialist professionals supporting children and young people with vision impairment
- Watch our introduction to the CFVI for professionals video
- NatSIP quality standards for sensory support services in England
- Useful articles and further reading
CFVI specialist resources
An accompanying training manual gives an overview of their content, including key messages. It focuses on two of the PowerPoints in detail, providing annotations to highlight similarities across the design of slides for Areas 2-11. It also gives an annotation of the Area 1 resource, where the content is organised slightly differently. Finally, the manual explores how the resources might be customised by a presenter.
Overview
The resources below introduce each area and give examples of; potential barriers to facilitating inclusion for CYPVI, targeted intervention approaches we can draw upon to help reduce these, the opportunity to reflect on the social experiences and developmental paths of individual CYPVI, good practice principles for supporting CYPVI in education and links to useful resources/websites for each CFVI area. The overview introduces the CFVI detailing why it was developed, who it is intended to be used with and how it can be helpful to a range of stakeholders.
Focuses on senses and looks at why interventions to promote sensory development are important for CYPVI.
Recognises the importance of working with the child/young person to develop effective communication in formal and informal settings through specialist adjustments or adopting alternative or bespoke approaches to teaching.
Recognises the importance of working with CYPVI to develop their literacy skills and promote accessible learning environments.
Recognises the importance of teaching CYPVI to be able to navigate the world around them and move safely from one area to the next.
Recognises the importance of supporting CYPVI to develop the day-to-day skills they need in order to live as independent a life as possible.
Considers the teaching of methods CYPVI can use to access, manage and produce information as independently as possible.
Recognises the importance of CYPVI being provided with the training and opportunity to be able to use technology and equipment with as much independence as possible.
Recognises that CYPVI need targeted teaching to support the development of their mental and emotional resilience in a world that should be inclusive, as well as their mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing.
Recognises the importance of supporting CYPVI to access and participate in a range of social, sport and leisure opportunities.
Recognises the importance of supporting CYPVI to prepare for their lives after compulsory education.
Guidance for customising your training presentation
The resources have been designed for use by specialist practitioners who work in vision impairment education (i.e. QTVIs and QRHS). As indicated in the training manual they are intended to be customised as required. An important distinction is made however between the content of the non-customisable slides and those that are explicitly labelled customisable. You should therefore retain the content of non-customisable slides within each PowerPoint, and where work on slides indicated as customisable is your own this should be clearly signalled as part of your training presentation. The training manual is not designed to be customised. Adherence to this guidance should ensure that the integrity of the resources is preserved.
If you have any questions or would like to get in touch, please email us at: [email protected].
Getting started with the CFVI: Sharing practice and experiences
This document provides a summary of participants’ responses in CPD undertaken during the academic year 2023-24. These CPD sessions focused on ‘Getting started with the Curriculum Framework for children and young people with Vision Impairment (CFVI) - Sharing Practice and Experiences’. This summative document draws together shared experience and practices, organising participants' responses into ways of working with the CFVI and brings together widely available resources that participants use in their work.
Introducing the CFVI to non-specialists
We have developed a series of short guides aimed at those working in education who are non-specialists in the field of vision impairment (VI). There are guides for teachers, for support staff working with students with VI and for those in schools responsible for monitoring provision and planning around statutory and non-statutory documentation that reflect the needs of children and young people with VI.
The guides are designed to support understanding of the vital impact of joint working between specialists and non-specialists in the education of children and young people with vision impairment. These are nation specific Accessible PDFs for printing or sharing as electronic files.
Download these now on our CFVI for educators (non-VI specialists) page
An introduction to the CFVI for non-specialist professionals supporting children and young people with vision impairment
This short video has been developed to introduce education professionals working with a children or young people with vision impairment to the Curriculum Framework for Children and Young People with Vision Impairment (CFVI). As a specialist in the field, you might wish to share it with professionals with whom you work who are non-specialists. The CFVI sets out and explains the support that children and young people with vision impairment aged 0–25 need so that they get fair and equal access to education. The CFVI was developed with parents and carers, young people and education professionals, and is now used widely across the United Kingdom.
The video was created by UCAN Productions, a performance and creative arts charity for blind and partially sighted children, young people, adults and their friends. We spoke with teachers who have supported children and young people with vision impairment to ask them what they thought should be included in the video. Central, however, to the video are the voices of the young people who draw upon their lived experience to explain why the implementation of the CFVI is so important for the educational and social inclusion of children and young people with vision impairment and how you can have a role in supporting this.
“I think it’s also to make the classroom experience inclusive rather than exclusive for a young person who maybe doesn’t find it totally easy to feel different and othered. So how I could work at making an inclusive classroom that enabled everybody to access things in a similar way as possible to make all children feel, you know, included in the classroom rather than entirely making everything separate for one child, which can be quite othering.” (Classroom teacher)
Research evidence highlights how important it is for non-specialist and specialist professionals and parents to collaborate when supporting a children or young person with vision impairment. The CFVI aims to facilitate this through a person-centred approach. To support educators in knowing how to use the CFVI, RNIB have developed a series of resources for education professionals. There are three guides - for teachers, for support staff working with students in a one-to-one capacity and for those in schools responsible for monitoring provision and planning around statutory and non-statutory documentation that reflect the needs of children and young people with vision impairment. The resources are tailored to different roles across the UK and are designed to support understanding of the vital role specialists and non-specialists working together have in the education of children and young people with vision impairment.
Watch our introduction to the CFVI for professionals video
There are two other videos available developed by children and young people introducing different audiences to the CFVI - one for parents and one for children and young people. This video for professionals can also be accessed from Specialist resources and from CFVI Resource Hub Area 1.
NatSIP quality standards for sensory support services in England
The NatSIP Quality Standards for Sensory Support Services in England, 2016 Edition, has been updated to take account of changes in education policy and now also includes a useful appendix which shows how the quality standards and the Curriculum Framework for Children/Young people with Vision Impairment (CFVI) support one another and the vital work of sensory support teams.
You can view and download the new revised Quality Standards for Sensory Support Services in England from the Document library on the NatSIP website.
Useful articles and further reading
CFVI Article in the British Journal of Vision Impairment (BJVI)
Read our latest article published in the BJVI entitled: ‘Development of a new curriculum framework for children and young people with vision impairment: A United Kingdom consultation using the Delphi approach’ (Hewett, R., Douglas, G., McLinden, M., & James, L., 2023). It presents the research and development that underpins the CFVI. The CFVI promises a transformative contribution to UK policies and practice in ensuring CYPVI and their families will more easily be able to navigate complex education systems and secure equitable access to the services to which they are entitled.
This article is available online and is free to download from Sage Journals.
