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RSS Networking Launch

Photo of Joanne speaking at the event

Rotherham Sight & Sound (RSS) celebrated a significant step forward last week, with an event at our newly refurbished Centre on Ship Hill.

We welcomed representatives from several local organisations who we have connections with, in terms of referrals to or from RSS along with several supporters and funders.

The Mayor of Rotherham (Councillor Sheila Cowen) and our Patron the Earl of Scarbrough with his wife the Countess of Scarbrough, who, along with SRSB/RSS CEO Joanne Ardern spoke about the work of this local charity and thanked all the organisations and supporters who have helped us raise awareness and funds. We then heard from a panel of clients, who told very powerful stories about their sight loss journeys and how RSS had supported them.

As RSS is a sensory service, we provides support for people with a visual impairment, Deaf people, both hearing aid users and British Sign Language (BSL) users, as well as people with a dual sensory loss (DeafBlind). This service was established after RSS was contacted by RMBC who had reviewed their service provision for people with a sensory impairment and wanted to partner with SRSB to develop their service provision across the Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council area. We are contracted with Rotherham council to deliver a range of services.

CEO Joanne Ardern comments “We want to thank RMBC for all their support over the last 7 years, they have been a pleasure to work with and we’re delighted with where we are today, as this was a much needed service in the community. When we opened RSS back in 2017, we only had a handful of Rotherham clients on our database. We now have over 1,300 Vision Impaired clients and over 1,100 Hearing Impaired clients and we’re delighted that RSS now has a more accessible building with a lift installed, and that has been reconfigured to enable us to offer a wider range of services and meeting space to support our clients with vision and/or hearing impairments.

“We began our long-awaited refurbishment on our Rotherham Sight & Sound (RSS) Centre on Ship Hill Rotherham at the beginning of March 2023. The Centre closed and staff were relocated in temporary offices in Rotherham until the refurb was complete. We were still supporting people in the community throughout and also taking minibuses to and from activities in Sheffield during the Centre closure. Staff moved back in February 2024, but then we had to finish the remaining work. We were delighted to resume full service from the end of April 2024!

“As you will appreciate, building work presents a lot of challenges and this has been a big project for a small charity, especially given the complications from the impact on building work after Covid. We are very grateful to clients for their patience and to all our staff who have worked so hard on this project, and of course for all the support we have had in donations. We are very proud of the Centre and now have a more accessible building with a lift installed and it has been reconfigured to enable us to offer a wider range of services and meeting space to support our clients with vision and/or hearing impairments. We are excited for the future and look forward to everyone joining us for this next stage…. and this includes all of the many local organisations who we connect with in many different ways to support people in our local community.”

We are now planning an Open Day on Thursday 29th August for existing or potential clients, organisations or supporters which will be drop in event, so please come along between 10am and 3pm if you would like to find out more.

If you can’t make that date and you’d like to know more about RSS please contact us on 01709 722 420 and enquiries@rotherss.org.uk  

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Photograph of a meeting in the centre

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