I can only share my experience of this for my child. We are based in Leeds, UK, your experience may be different.
It was the school that indicated that our non-verbal 5 year old needed to get an eye check. She was squinting and watching things at strange angles. We knew taking her to a high-street ophthalmologist was not going to work so our first port of call was our GP.
Our GP said they could refer us to specialist services in the NHS but to get the referral we’d first have to demonstrate that a private eye-test was unsuccessful.
We booked an eye test with a local well known service. We told them the child’s difficulties. They asked us in, and put drops in the child’s eyes. We were asked to come back in 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, the eye-test began but it was inconclusive. While the ophthalmologist was sure there was some minor issue with eyesight they were not able to determine the level of eye-sight loss to any extent. This was useful and we took the letter back to the GP.
The GP referred us to the specialist ophthalmology department in St James hospital Leeds. It took some time to get our appointment. When we went there, the staff were really able to make a lot of progress. However they were still inconclusive. Again, they noted that the eyesight was not 100% but also concluded that it was not bad enough to warrant glasses.
They said they would see us in a years time.
In that one year our child received intensive therapy. This helped her not only to make sounds but to verbally label pictures and shapes.
The next appointment went much better. Child was able to name and identify pictures and shapes. This help massively and it was determined that child did not have eyesight issues of any significance.
Please note below input
- You may be referred to St James or you may be able to get referred to ICAN in Wortley Beck health Center
- Bradford University Eye Clinic has been recommended a few times if that’s in your catchment area
- St Georges in Wakefield has been recommended.