Prison Optometry Services

We deliver opticians services into 53 prisons in England and Wales. We are experienced in working with all categories of prison and can cover anywhere in England and Wales.

Health in Justice

Collectively our opticians have over 50 years experience of working in prisons. Every year we test the eyes of over 14,000 prisoners and dispense over 15,000 spectacles. We have the data intelligence to accurately forecast the eye care needs of each prison and use data to model our services to ensure efficiency without compromising quality of care.

Our optometry service is unique because we have prisoners working at the heart of our organisation, making spectacles for other prisoners. The social benefit is that our trainees re-integrate back into the community by creating products to help others see more clearly, giving them a purpose that will ultimately prevent them from re-offending.

    1. Involving prisoners in the spectacle-making process helps to reduce re-offending

    2. As the largest prison optometry provider in the UK, we are trusted and experienced in our field

    3. We are the only opticians with data intelligence to accurately forecast the eye care needs of individual prisons

    4. We only deliver optometry services into prisons so our organisation is purpose built for working in secure establishments, avoiding any side hustle

    5. Fast turnaround- we deliver glasses to the prisoner 5 days after their eye testInvolving prisoners in the spectacle-making process helps to reduce re-offending

    6. As the largest prison optometry provider in the UK, we are trusted and experienced in our field

    7. We are the only opticians with data intelligence to accurately forecast the eye care needs of individual prisons

    8. We only deliver optometry services into prisons so our organisation is purpose built for working in secure establishments, avoiding any side hustle

    9. Fast turnaround- we deliver glasses to the prisoner 5 days after their eye test

  • We are the first opticians to:

    1. Write clinical guidance for best practice when working in a prison setting

    2. Created an online form to safely deal with medical emergencies, even without an optician onsite

    3. Create a comprehensive S1 template for opticians to ensure our clinical notes are of the highest standard.

  • We collect data from each prisoner we examine using smart, innovative software that helps us analyse the types and volumes of prescriptions needed by the prison population. This means we can fix the cost of our services over the lifetime of the contract.

    We are committed to learning from and overcoming the day-to-day challenges we face in prison settings. We document issues in great detail and, between our practitioners, brainstorm solutions. We have developed a guidebook for overcoming common prison healthcare issues, covering everything from clinical emergencies to unexplained DNAs.

    The Prison Opticians Trust is committed to working with the NHS to improve eye care for prisoners.