Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of taking steps to increase the number of Eye Clinic Liaison Officers working within the NHS.

The Government appreciates the impact that sight loss can have on a person’s life and the important role that Eye Clinic Liaison Officers can play in supporting patients newly diagnosed with sight loss, including signposting patients to appropriate support and rehabilitation services.

Eye clinics and their staff, including Eye Clinic Liaison Officers, are commissioned, and funded by individual Clinical Commissioning Groups on the basis of local assessments of need, details of which are not routinely collected centrally.