To be really worried the NHS will say no more glasses for my DD?

[DontTakeThemAway]

DD is 8 and got glasses in November 2021. She has an eye condition which was picked up by the health visitors at her 10mo check and she’s been under a consultant ever since. She had surgery in December 2020 to try and help the condition (she’ll never get rid of it) and it helped a bit but not a lot, so the consultant said glasses was the next stage to try before another operation.
The prescription itself is tiny (+0.75 in each eye) but there’s a special coating on the lenses that apparently really helps the eye condition - I think it's the extra thin plus anti glare/reflect.

It’s worked, because I have a completely different child with glasses than without. No more silly accidents in the school playground, no more falling over as we walk to school or anywhere, no more having to take the car everywhere as she can be trusted to walk and look around and see things! She’s also gone up 6 bookbands at school and is well on her way to being pulled off the scheme completely. Her confidence has also improved as well, so much so she put herself forward for school council this year (didn’t get it but it’s a massive improvement for her to actually go for it!)

She was without her glasses for 2 weeks in the summer when they broke and she was back to falling constantly; lots of grazed knees and bruised hands from falls. She had a nasty accident at holiday club where she fell down 3 concrete steps trying to walk between rooms (held in a different school to hers with portacabin classrooms and she needed to go from one portacabin to the hall and fell down the stairs) she was thankfully ok but an ambulance had to be called and she spent the night in hospital for a concussion and a broken arm. Again since having her glasses she’s completely fine and never had a repeat.

We had a checkup for her condition earlier this week and her consultant said her eyes have improved since having the glasses that she will now have to “justify” such a small prescription to NHS England. I told her all about the falls and the difference in my DD since getting her glasses and the consultant said “I know, if it was up to me she’d keep themwe just have to hope they agree".

I am literally at the point that I will do anything to have my DD keep her glasses. She loves her glasses, she tucks them into the case at night and says goodnight to them, if anyone says anything negative about them she replies “But at least I can see”. She also looks incredibly smart and grown up in her glasses.

Is there anything I can do to make sure she keeps her glasses? Or is this going to be something else I’m going to have to pay for? I will pay for it privately if needed but I'm a single parent so it will mean it comes from somewhere else to pay. I know the glasses are expensive to the NHS because we take the prescription to an optician and we always have to wait as it goes to the NHS for approval (usually wait 3-4 weeks instead of the standard 2 for her glasses).

But not all adaptations come under prescriptions. The prescriptions cover the cost of the correction required in the lense but don't necessarily cover the full cost of things like tints. We had to pay for the particular tints that my daughter needed.

As I said before, I really don’t understand this at all, especially not without seeing the prescription.

A few things:

• an optician wouldn’t question a voucher presented to them that had come from the hospital eye service. They just dispense the glasses and claim the voucher.
• I have never known a situation where a voucher had to be sent away for approval and I’ve being doing this for 20+ years.
• Using high index lenses for +0.75DS would be pointless - it wouldn’t make any difference. There is virtually no thickness to them anyway and the refractive index would make no difference really. The main thing would be to use the correct size of lens to cut them out from.
• Anti-reflection coatings in themselves would not do anything to help a child’s vision. An anti-reflection coating is there to reduce the glare that would be caused by wearing the glasses if they were uncoated. They don’t reduce any glare you would experience without glasses on.
• I was wondering if there was prism in the prescription as that’s the only thing I can think of that would sort of fit with some of the OP’s post, but all the points above still stand anyway.
• A hospital voucher doesn’t mean you are entitled to the maximum voucher value as a PP said - it’s still based on the prescription. Thus far I’ve not seen anything to suggest it would be anything other than the minimum voucher A. You can get free glasses for the voucher value at some opticians, or you can put it towards paying for more expensive ones.

@CliffordMystery I agree! Either the consultant says they are necessary, or they aren’t.
As I’ve said upthread, +0.75 is unlikely to make much difference to most 8 year olds but if I was satisfied that the prescription would help, I would absolutely prescribe glasses and nobody would question it. And we’re even less likely to question a hospital voucher 🤷🏻‍♀️

Exactly!

@JenniferWooley the optician was being an a-hole. The opticians and their staff I deal with admit there are limits to funding so try to work around it. I've been told to get my DD to get a new prescription so she could have her allocation of free specs again.

Hopefully your DD will still be entitled to free glasses but I’d pop into optician and ask for info re if you didn’t have consultant prescription. My son has worn glasses since he was 9 and they were usually free or a small extra payment for designer frames. We always got the lenses thinned too.