Homeless charity to set up in Birmingham

Vision Care for Homeless People plans to run a centre in Birmingham by this September, following on from its London clinics offering eye care and spectacles to the homeless.

The weekly Birmingham clinic will be held on Salvation Army premises in an area accessible to a large proportion of the city's homeless people.

Essilor has agreed to underwrite the clinic's day-to-day running costs of some £5,000 a year for the first three years and will also provide free lenses and glazing for the first year, while Birmingham Optical has donated instrumentation needed for the clinic.

The clinic held at Victoria train station in London has recently been boosted by an agreement with Boots Opticians, which supplies an optometrist and a dispensing optician for one day every month. Keeler has donated a Pulsar intelliPuff tonometer.