Working Age Adults

Services are designed to help the blind or vision impaired adult make the personal adjustment to living with vision loss- physically, emotionally, socially. Programs can be provided at the Center’s 5 acre campus and state of the art facility or in the home and community.

On-Campus Programs

Residential Rehabilitation

An intensive and comprehensive rehabilitation program designed primarily for newly-blinded adults to make the physical and emotional adjustments to living with blindness. In this program, a multiplicity of skills are addressed in a residential campus environment:

The Comprehensive Residential Rehabilitation addresses a variety of needs, as follows:

• Individual and Group Counseling for adjustment to vision loss
• Mobility skills to travel indoors and outdoors, including street crossing, public transportation, and shopping
• Communications Skills, using cassette and digital recorders, Braille, handwriting, computers, personal data assistants, low vision devices, and recordkeeping systems to manage personal, school, and work information
• Manual arts in a woodshop setting to develop organization skills and a systematic approach to manual tasks
• Daily living skills, including grooming, cooking, housekeeping, money management, and time management skills
• Health care needs, including diabetes management, labeling, organization, and administration of medicine
• Low Vision skills to maximize the use of remaining vision using lighting, magnifiers, telescopes and other devices

By residing on campus in the beautifully restored English Tudor style mansion, a home away from home, participants gain peer support and strength from each other that becomes a very important dimension of the rehabilitation process.

Diagnostic Evaluation: A two-week functional assessment encompassing activities of daily living, travel skills, use of remaining vision, information management, personal health care, and adjustment to vision loss.

Work Assessment: A two-week evaluation geared towards vocational development, including Standard Vocational Testing, functional skills assessment, review of work history, work experience and educational background, understanding of disability benefits and social security services, and exploration of vocational options. Participants in this program are presumed to have functional adaptive skills, including travel, information management and personal care.

Independent Living: A twelve-week plus course to assist clients in achieving or maintaining personal independence. The course includes personal, group, and peer counseling; travel skills, beginning with indoors and moving to street crossings, public transportation, shopping/banking/other community experiences; spatial orientation for safe travel and functioning indoors; daily living skills addressing personal and home care, from grooming to cooking, cleaning and eating skills; low vision, utilizing adaptive skills and equipment to manipulate lighting, contrast, and size to maximize the use of remaining vision; manual arts to develop organization and safety techniques using common household tools; health management to label and administer medications; Diabetes management to measure sugar levels and draw and administer insulin safely; information management to access, store and retrieve personal, school, or work data including telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, medical records, checks, bank records, appointments and notes.

Job Market Preparation: A four-week course to help clients explore work interests, aptitudes and skills to determine realistic career goals. Activities include remedial training, vocational counseling, disclosure, job search, informational interviews, job shadowing, vocational development and career planning. An additional four-week job internship is available depending on skills and goals.

GED Preparation: A tutoring program to prepare individuals to successfully complete the GED test. This course is taught on the Carroll Center campus. Training is based on the outcome of an eight-hour evaluation.

Diabetes Self-Management: A program to assure that partially sighted or blind individuals are safe to administer insulin or other medications. Clients are trained in methods of self-administration and adaptive devices. Can also be provided off campus in the community.

Application Forms for this program

To download application forms and to find out what needs to be done prior to application, please visit our Rehabilitation Program Application Forms page.

For further information, please contact Contact Margaret Cleary, Admissions Director at 1–800–852–3131, ext. 216 or email mecleary@carroll.org.

Low Vision Assessment & Training

Trainees will describe and demonstrate the use they make of any remaining vision. Through a process involving standardized visual measurements and careful observation, the trainee reviews their visual history, explores the use of low vision devices, and receives direction as to practical and clinical methods of enhancing their visual abilities.

For further information, please contact Dina Rosenbaum at the Carroll Center, 1–800–852–3131 or email dina.rosenbaum@carroll.org.

Off-Campus Programs

Employment Support

The Carroll Center offers resources, support, and guidance for persons who are visually impaired and are seeking employment or are in need of technical adaptations or consultation in order to obtain employment or remain employed.

Placement Services: The Carroll Center’s Employment Services Coordinator helps visually-impaired clients identify job leads, prepare resumes, and arrange for appointments. Practice interviews and evaluation of work skills are also provided when necessary. Upon placement, job coaching and follow-up services are made available. The coordinator will help build the necessary rapport between the clients and prospective employer by providing ADA awareness, accessibility recommendations, and training.

Vision Use in Employment (VUE): This program services the needs of persons who are having difficulties on the job as a result of deteriorating vision. Includes on-site assessments, clinical vision examinations when necessary, and on-site training by a low-vision rehabilitation engineer.

Adaptive Software Engineering: This component of Employment Services is designed to assist individuals, businesses, or schools construct a usable and workable adaptive computer environment by installing adaptive software for Braille translation, and magnified screen and/or speech for word processing or business applications.

For further information, please contact Dina Rosenbaum at the Carroll Center, 1–800–852–3131 or email dina.rosenbaum@carroll.org.

Home & Community Services

Safe Travel- Orientation & Mobility Training

Adults in need of Orientation and Mobility training may be blind from birth, or they may have lost part or even all of their vision at any time along the way. Travel needs cover a wide range of situations and problems. Our practice is to listen to what the client has to say about his or her problems and needs, and their travel goals, then make recommendations for training.

Safe travel training may take place in the home, in the home neighborhood, in local business areas, on job sites, on public transportation, or wherever there are travel problems. Travel tools might include low vision skills and devices such as special tinted glasses, long, white cane, or support canes. The length of training will vary with each person’s goals and abilities and might take one two-hour lesson or may take several lessons to achieve travel goals. It’s not uncommon for a person to receive episodes of mobility instruction as needed over the course of years.

For further information, please contact Richard Connors at richard.connors@carroll.org or call 617-969-6200, ext. 201.