Chief Executive at Sight Scotland and Sight Scotland Veterans
Take a look at the role…
Thank you for your interest in the opportunity to lead Sight Scotland and Sight Scotland Veterans.
The re-branding of our two charities in October 2020 marked the start of an exciting new chapter in our proud history of service and support to those people and their families who are impacted by sight loss. We are fortunate at Sight Scotland and Sight Scotland Veterans to have a fantastic team and the resources required to make a real difference to people’s lives.
Our Board is looking forward to working with the new Chief Executive to deliver real value to those people who are most in need of our services. I hope that you will consider joining us to grow our reach and help achieve our ambition that no one in Scotland should suffer loneliness, fear and exclusion due to sight loss.
I wish you well in your application.
Michael Craig, Chair of Sight Scotland / Sight Scotland Veterans
Sight Scotland and Sight Scotland Veterans are sister charities. Our mission is to reach everyone in Scotland with sight loss – where and when they need us. We are determined that no one should face sight loss alone.
Sight Scotland is one of Scotland’s oldest charities and has been dedicated to meeting the challenges of visual impairment for over two centuries. Sight Scotland Veterans was established in the First World War. The charities are governed by the same Board and share a Chief Executive, senior management roles and head office functions. Each charity has its own Director of Services who leads the operations, as well as having separate finances. Sight Scotland proactively fundraises to support services, whereas at the moment Sight Scotland Veterans does not, with services being funded by legacies and investments.
In addition to running services, the charities support visually impaired people through advocacy and campaigning, making sure that the voices of those with sight loss and their families and carers are heard at the highest level. We aim to strengthen our focus on research and development through medical research, social research, impact evaluation and through new forms of technology and innovative models of support.
The charities changed their names from Royal Blind and Scottish War Blinded in October 2020.
Sight Scotland
Our services range from providing specialist education to visually impaired pupils both at the Royal Blind School and in mainstream schools, to residential care and document transcription to enable visually impaired people to access vital documents such as bank statements. In early 2021 we launched a new community based service that combines charity funded emotional and practical support with local authority contracts for rehabilitation and mobility
Sight Scotland Veterans
Sight Scotland Veterans offers information, guidance and support whether at home, in the community or at our activity centres. We are here to help veterans, and their families and friends, to connect, be independent and live well. The vast majority of veterans that we support lost their sight after their time in service due to old age and conditions like glaucoma and macular degeneration, although we also have a small number of veterans who lost their sight during active service
Our values
Our joint Sight Scotland and Sight Scotland Veterans values are our moral compass. That is why we have refreshed them, so that they truly reflect who we are from the inside out; what we stand for. By living and breathing our values every single day we will successfully deliver our strategies and our ambitions of reaching many more people and communities who need our support. Our three values; Transform, Unite and Thrive, are closely entwined with our identity because they reflect what we do, how we do it and why we do it respectively
