The Association of British Dispensing Opticians (ABDO) has published its new five-year plan, and said the document would provide a guide to its work over the coming years.
In the plan, ABDO highlighted its commitments to providing opportunities and development for members, implementing the GOC’s new education standards, developing the profession’s evidence base and ensuring the organisation was sustainable.
The document was divided into two parts; ABDO’s Strategic Plan 2022-26 and its Annual Plan 2022.
Jo Holmes, ABDO president, said: ‘This plan means we can look forward with confidence and with a positive vision of what we want to achieve for our members.
‘We look forward to working on the actions within the plan over the next five years; for the benefit of dispensing opticians (DOs) and contact lens opticians (CLOs), and ultimately, for the benefit of the public across all four nations of the UK.’
Purpose, vision and values
In the document’s opening statement, Holmes and ABDO general secretary, Sir Tony Garrett, explained: ‘Developing our strategic plan has involved looking closely at the developments that are likely to shape the future and considering the implications for our members and for ABDO as an organisation.
‘So while we cannot predict precisely what the future holds, we can look forward with confidence and a positive vision of what we want to achieve for our members.’
ABDO highlighted that planning for the future had involved a wide range of activity, including drafting new statements for the association’s purpose, vision and values. These included commitments to increasing the understanding and recognition of members’ roles, transparency around the organisation’s work and working closely with colleagues and other organisations.
The five-year plan also included a statement on how ABDO would continue to respond to external developments, such as the coronavirus pandemic.
It noted the pandemic had presented major challenges and led to new ways of working: ‘Looking ahead to the next two to five years, members will continue to manage the impact of the pandemic, with the required safeguards meaning extra costs and that they can see fewer patients.’
Apart from the pandemic, the plan noted a number of trends that ABDO said were ‘likely to be significant for members and for ABDO.’ Chief among these was demographic shift towards an older population, which ABDO said was likely to lead to increased demand for spectacles, growing numbers of people with eye disease and an increased need for DOs to be able to provide eye care for patients with dementia and its comorbidities.
One step at a time
ABDO’s Annual Plan for 2022 was included in the release of its longer-term document. More detail was provided around how the association would immediately begin working towards its goals.
As part of its aim to better represent members, for example, ABDO said it would ‘influence the commissioning of, and fees payable for, eye care services across the UK by representing our members in a wide range of forums.’
It explained how it would target this goal: ‘For example, in England we will participate in the Ophthalmic Fees Negotiating Committee and the Clinical Council for Eye Health Commissioning, in Wales we will contribute to the Welsh Government’s Eyecare Review and in Scotland, we will support the move to enable DOs to be listed as NHS performers.’
The association also laid out how it intended to help develop its members’ careers and opportunities. Its annual plan included a commitment to support members in identifying and achieving their continuing professional development goals, which it said would be important as the older continuing education and training system had been discontinued.
ABDO added it would also work on implementing the General Optical Council’s new standards for qualification providers, alongside the new education outcomes for both DOs and CLOs. As part of this, it said that it would complete its review of the syllabus for its FBDO Diploma and contribute to the development of the apprenticeship standard for DOs.
- The complete document is available at abdo.org.uk.