Human behavioural sciences ongoing projects

Exploring the benefits of our canine services for children living with sight loss and their families

Guide Dogs is implementing work that will aid the ongoing evaluation and development of the buddy dogs service for children. This research will explore:

• The impact of the dog on the child
• The broader impact on the family

Outputs from this work will increase our understanding of customer wants and needs, increase knowledge around the emotional wellbeing of children with a vision impairment and help support the development of the buddy dog service for the benefit of children and their families.

Understanding our impact

A project is being undertaken to improve our understanding of our impact on the lives of people with sight loss. The project aims to develop robust and easy to use outcome measures relating to people with sight loss living actively, independently and well.

Measures will focus on what people with sight loss say are the most important aspects to them, rather than focusing on specific services. The study will involve a landscape review and qualitative interviews with a range of service users and staff. Outputs will help Guide Dogs understand our impact and which services we need to improve or deliver in the future.