Insight Society Services and the Covid-19 Emergency

In normal times, we provide a substantial activity programme including arts, access to heritage attractions, movement and dance, and access to fitness coaching at women’s only gyms.

Insight Society has been severely affected by Covid, particularly by ‘social distancing’. Most of our Service Users are BSVI women from Muslim families. For religious / cultural reasons, they won’t accept a guide dog. Therefore, usually we would provide them with human guides to enable them to take part in our activities. Our human guides and volunteers also provide our home visiting service. Since the start of the lockdown in March 2020, the close contact between BVSI people and our volunteers that ‘human guiding’ depends on has been against Covid-19 safety regulations. We have tried hard to keep in touch with our most vulnerable service users by telephone.

Our Service Users suffer from a lack of privacy because they rely on their families to read their letters, do their banking, make medical appointments, and often operate computers and Smartphones for them.

A terrible side effect of the lockdown is that a relatively small number BSVI women have become very vulnerable to violence and sexual exploitation behind the ‘lockdown closed doors’ of their family houses.