Commentary on Sections Schedule 4 – After-care under the Mental Health Act 1983: direct payments Section 77 – Registers of sight impaired adults, disabled adults, etc.
468.Subsection (1) sets out the requirement on local authorities to establish and maintain a register of people who are ordinarily resident in their area and are sight impaired. This replaces the requirement on local authorities to maintain registers of disabled people under section 29(4)(g) of the National Assistance Act 1948.
469.There is no legal definition of “sight impairment”, but clinical guidelines make it clear that someone can be certified as sight impaired if they are “substantially and permanently handicapped by defective vision caused by congenital defect or illness or injury”.
470.Subsection (2) allows for regulations to describe what “sight impairment” and “severe sight impairment” mean for the purposes of compiling a local authority register.
Subsection (3) gives local authorities the option to establish and maintain registers of people living in their area who require care and support or who might in the future. This section will allow those people whose needs may change over time to be accurately recorded – for instance, to take account of an individual with a progressive neurological condition who may need care and support at some point in the future.
471.Subsection (4) defines the categories of people who might be included in these voluntary general registers.