Access to Work, Keeping Fit

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. 

IN TOUCH

TX: 09.01.2018 2040-2100

PRESENTER: PETER WHITE

PRODUCER: CHERYL GABRIEL

White

Good evening. Tonight, it’s often described as the government’s best kept secret. But when it comes to the Access to Work scheme, some blind clients say it’s they who are being kept in the dark. And some of the problems of getting and keeping fit when you’re blind.

Clip

We play the monster game where I sort of chase the children around the house pretending to be a monster and I feel like I’m playing with them, they feel like they’re getting my attention but I feel like it’s still a struggle, I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing in terms of what I need to do to be fit, how much exercise I need. It’s all a bit daunting.

White

We’ll be looking for solutions later in the programme.

But first, the government’s Access to Work scheme is designed to help disabled people compete in the workplace on equal terms. It might be by providing special equipment, or money for extra human support, or assistance with transport. When it works well it can be a massive help. But listeners have been consistently telling us on In Touch that it can also be subject to sudden changes and that when this happens there’s often little support in explaining what you’re supposed to do.

Martin Conway is a social worker in Manchester, whose Access to Work money provides him with someone to help out with various aspects of his job. But now new, unexplained, requirements have suddenly left him without any money to pay his support worker.

Our reporter, Tom Walker, has been to see Martin, who first explained the help his assistant gave him.

Conway

I need help with a range of work tasks. I suppose primarily it’s administrative, so I have a support worker and she works 20 hours a week funded by Access to Work and she will assist me with bits and pieces of admin because despite the improvements in technology I can access much of the database that I need but not all of it. And so, she needs to actually assist me with putting documents in the right place, checking documents, checking reports and we still have to read letters and forms because we still receive them and sometimes actually completing forms as well with people, such as benefit applications.

White

So, Tom, would Martin be able to work without the help of his support worker?

Walker

No, Martin reckons he’d only be able to do about 50% of the tasks associated with his work.

White

So, what’s gone wrong in this case?

Walker

To put things simply, Jasmine has been added to Martin’s employers’ payroll and he reimburses them with the funding he was receiving from Access to Work.

White

But in fact, in this case, Access to Work have stopped reimbursing Martin, which means he can’t pay them?

Walker

They certainly have. Access to Work stopped paying Martin last May because his claim ran out. But that was resolved. But then another problem arose.

Conway

I’ve been told by Access to Work in December that they won’t make any further payments to me until I produce a contract of employment between myself and the support worker. Now this is not something in 25 years of using Access to Work I’ve ever been asked to do. And in fact, although I’m social worker and am reasonably competent I have no real experience in actually drawing up a contract of employment, which normally an HR department would do.

Walker

Have they suggested to you how you might actually go about doing that?

Conway

No, I mean they’ve just literally told me to look on the internet and take a blueprint from there.

Walker

As a result, Martin has built up arrears of around £11,000, which he owes to his employer. Luckily his bosses are being very reasonable and aren’t pushing him to repay the money.

White

So how does he feel about being suddenly required to draw up a contract?

Walker

I put that to Martin and said you know, look, you’re effectively managing a member of staff here, so surely, it’s right that there is a contract of employment in place? And broadly speaking, Martin agrees.

Conway

Well it’s a concern, Tom, because obviously I have now attempted, with my support worker, to draw up a very basic contract of what we think the duties are. And we’ve sent that to Access to Work, now I have no awareness at this stage whether that will be satisfactory for them and if it isn’t obviously I don’t know when or if they’re going to make any further payments and obviously this is all issues that we have to cope with on top of actually doing an existing full-time job and really Access to Work don’t offer any support with any of this.

I’ve always said that the support worker arrangements are far too loose and actually there’s no protection there for the employee or actually for myself because as it stands at the moment without a contract Jasmine could walk out at a moment’s notice or I could fire her at a moment’s notice without any particularly good reason for doing so. So, I think there is a need for a contract but there should maybe be some kind of standard format that they can at least point us in the direction of, having contracts, because obviously there are people who have support workers all over the country and I imagine the arrangements are completely different in each case.

White

So, Tom, what do Access to Work say? Presumably Martin has tried to get in touch with them?

Walker

He certainly has but communicating with them has been – well quite challenging.

Conway

Well it’s very difficult at the moment because when you – you make a call to a call centre, they then say a member of the payments team will ring you back within three hours. Now on the last occasion I attempted this that did happen, I have to say, and the member of the payments team was probably as helpful as he could be but he couldn’t leave me a number by which I could get back to him directly, he couldn’t leave me an email by which I could get back to him directly and so the chances are on the next occasion that I contact the Access to Work and ask for the payments team I could get a completely different person.

White

Well we did ask to talk to a minister at the Department for Work and Pensions but were told no one was available. Instead we were given a statement, which listed some of the improvements Access to Work was offering. For example, last year they launched a digital service to make the application process more accessible and efficient. And there had been a real terms increase in funding which saw an increase of 8% in people declared eligible for the scheme in the last year. But this didn’t address the questions we’d asked about Martin’s case. However, in something labelled ‘further information’ they told us that Mr Conway’s Access to Work had not been stopped and that they would encourage him to raise any concerns regarding the support worker contract with an Access to Work manager. So, when we recorded this yesterday I asked Tom if Martin had done this and what the result had been.

Walker

I spoke to Martin about half an hour ago Peter and since we got involved he’s been put in contact with a senior manager from Access to Work. The senior manager told Martin that they did have some queries regarding his payments but that he should have continued to be paid until they were resolved. The senior manager says he’s going to look into it today and hopefully release at least some payment which should satisfy everybody.

White

Have you spoken to other users of Access to Work and what are the kind of things they say?

Walker

I’ve spoken to a couple of people, Peter, who have fairly similar frustrations, in particular in relation to continuity of service. They phoned the call centre who then, apparently, email a payments team and then somebody phones you back. And you never seem to speak to the same person on consecutive occasions. And people say to me that that’s very frustrating and just makes it very difficult to get hold of the money that you’re actually entitled to.

White

And what are the kind of things that other people say that they’ve had problems with?

Walker

Just getting paid really, things like payments to drivers, payments for support workers. Those are the key things that have been mentioned to me over the past week while I’ve been looking into this story.

White

Tom Walker. Well we’ll continue to press for an interview with the minister about employment of visually-impaired people generally and the Access to Work scheme in particular.

Now, you couldn’t turn on your radio after Christmas without being assailed by keep fit advice. You’ve had your fun, seemed to be the implication, now pay the price. But keeping and staying fit poses particular challenges if you’re visually-impaired, as London parents Hetal and Will have discovered.

Hetal Bapodra described some of the difficulties she faces.

Bapodra

I’d like to be able to keep up with the sheer amount of energy my children have, which has been the biggest surprise about being a parent. My four-and-a-half-year-old literally can keep going from 7.00 a.m. to 7.00 p.m. without stopping and I’m exhausted. I was quite interested, I think, about my existing level of fitness. So, I asked for a Fitbit a couple of Christmas’ ago just to find out really, I was just interested in how many steps I did every day. And I found that I was doing a lot more steps than I thought I was, just walking around after the children. Which I found quite a good way of starting to think about my fitness and understand my fitness. I sort of then realised that actually there are things that I could quite easily fit into my day for fitness, like instead of going to wash my hands downstairs I would go upstairs to wash my hands. I also started to think about how I could play with the children and get my heartrate going, get a bit of a sweat up and we play the monster game where I sort of chase the children around the house, pretending to be a monster, and I feel like I’m playing with them, they feel like they’re getting my attention but I feel like it’s still a struggle, I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing in terms of what I need to do to be fit, how much exercise I need. It’s all a bit daunting and I don’t really have time to go to the gym because when I do have time to myself that time is really precious and often we need to use that time to do life admin, like pay bills or even if it’s been a bad week go and have a nice long bath to relax.

I’m definitely trying and my son started reception this year, so the school run means that I’m going out. So, what I really need is some help on how to stay fit, like how to be fit, what do I need to do to achieve a reasonable level of fitness. So, In Touch, I don’t know if you can help me. Eventually I’d quite like to maybe run a 5K for charity. So, if you can get me fit in 2018 that would be amazing. Help!

White

Well, that’s what we’re here for, no sooner asked than done. Jane Taylor is a visually- impaired fitness coach and we asked Jane what advice she would give to Hetal and thousands like her.

Taylor

I would say running up and down the stairs is particularly good for starting to get fit. It is actually a fantastic form of exercise. The trouble is that it’s a bit mind-numbing to be running up and down the stairs and it’s also extremely hard work to be doing that for anything other than having to do it. So, it’s probably not the best bet in terms of exercise.

I would say at home there’s a couple of things that Hetal might want to look at. Firstly, it’s never been easier to get up and dance. And I cannot overstate how important just doing a little bit of bopping around can be, particularly if you’re somebody who spends most of your time inactive. I know that’s not the case with her. But it’s really easy now, you can just talk to your smart speaker, ask it to stream some music for you, you can choose your own selection and do somewhere between three and five minutes, if that’s all you can manage, which I think is pretty terrific. But honestly, if you’ve got a CD to hand and an old-fashioned CD player it does the job just as well. The important thing is to remember to do it sort of reasonably frequently. The worst thing you can do, if you are worried about being fit, is to sit on your backside and still worry about being fit.

White

Anything else in the way of equipment, I’ll come on to people who don’t want to spend a load of money in equipment in a minute, but anything like that that Hetal and Will and people like them might want to use?

Taylor

Yes, actually home exercise equipment has come down in price really significantly and there’s some good quality gym style machines for in particular heart and lung fitness which are very affordable and will discipline you at home. The fact is once you’ve bought it you’ve got to use it. They don’t take up too much space. My best buys would be a bike, a home exercise bike, or a rower, both of which will give you a decent cardio workout. But remember that neither of those involves strength and balance training overall, which you do also need to do in order to be able to give you the body confidence to be around and outdoors.

White

Now there may be people who don’t want to spend that much money or even don’t think they want to do something as strenuous as that, say perhaps older people, I know there are plenty of fit older people but people perhaps who just want to tone up a bit, maybe even want to do it sitting in their armchair.

Taylor

Okay, so I’m really anti sitting in an armchair.

White

Right.

Taylor

This is one way for sure you are not going to get fit. And probably the worst thing for somebody who feels that their mobility is poor is to spend even longer sitting down. We know this for sure now. So, you’ve got to make that effort, if necessary use an alarm system of some sort to remind you every half an hour. Get up, stand up, move around, jiggle your legs around, walk up the stairs and back down again, if you have stairs, anything it doesn’t actually have to be a huge amount of things that you do but that will make a big difference to your level of health related fitness. If you can manage to do that every half an hour or so.

White

Okay, so what about the many visually-impaired people who are quite happy to go out, might really rather do something with other people if they could find somewhere that was welcoming and where there was the kind of exercise and equipment that was reasonably easy for them to use?

Taylor

Okay so my first best bet here would be to see what’s going on in your local park. Outdoors is always fantastic and remember psychologically it lifts your mood as well and that’s really important if you feel unfit and out of the swim. The park runs set up, which is this regular sort of weekend 5K number that goes on in lots of parks, they have a great people infrastructure among local volunteers now and I suggest if you get on the website and have a look for a local park run.

White

What about swimming, some people swear by swimming as being the kind of all pervasive way to get fit, other blind people I know, and I’m one of them, really rather shrink at the idea of swimming pools and all that standing on one leg putting your pants back on. What – how much does that help and are there alternatives?

Taylor

Swimming is a phenomenal cardiovascular all-round body exercise. So, if it’s your kind of thing and if the pool doesn’t freak you out and if you don’t keep bumping into everyone else then go-ahead swim. My best secret alternative, which I’ve been doing for years and years, is basically walking or running in deep water. I hug the side of the swimming pool, so I use the length but I stay right by the edge and that kind of indicates if I’m in the slow lane at the edge that anyone can go past me because I’m going to be the slowest in the pool. But when you are walking or running in deep water the idea is that not to go quickly, it’s going to be hard, hard work to go at all, so you’re making pace very slowly but you’re working incredibly hard. The harder you go the harder the water pushes back against you – I love it.

White

And you’ve got another thing you’re very keen on I think which is this idea of Nordic walking?

Taylor

Yeah, this is a brilliant form of exercise for people who are a bit more willing to be more adventurous, particularly over rougher ground. Bear in mind if you want to improve your balance going walking over uneven ground is a great way of doing it. With the Nordic walking you also get the two great big long poles, which help to stabilise you, and they help you to go faster and further with this feeling of kind of really flying along. There are loads of Nordic walking groups and again you need to look online and see whether you can get yourself in touch with one of the instructors just for a few basic exercise training sessions in how to get up to speed and then see if you can get yourself in with a group.

White

Gyms, we’ve done it before, it’s a separate subject but if you were summing it up in two sentences what would you say?

Taylor

People tend to be self-selecting when it comes to gyms. If you are trying a gym for the first time phone first, insist on speaking to the gym manager, make sure somebody is going to help and guide you around when you first go. If you need two or three wandering around trips, just to get your navigation, to get your orientation make sure you’re able to do that. Try to get a short subscription, don’t sign up for a year, alright, there are ways of getting around this and make sure above all that there is a suitably qualified trainer who can set your gym programme for you.

White

And finally, back to Hetal. She said she wanted to run a 5K before the end of this year. A good aim, easy to do?

Taylor

Not easy but it’s a great aim. And having a specific goal really, really helps. Try getting in touch with British Blind Sport because they run a find-a-guide scheme. They will introduce you to a tether, which is a great way of starting off your running. And they might be able to bring you up to speed for your 5K or try the park run people, as I mentioned before.

White

And Hetal if you do it perhaps you’d stay in touch with us and let us know how you get on.

That was Jane Taylor and no doubt we’ll be returning to the subject throughout the year.

Tell us your own strategies for staying fit. You can call our action line on 0800 044 044 for 24 hours after tonight’s programme. You can email in touch@bbc.co.uk or you can click on contact us on our website, that’s www.bbc.co.uk/intouch. You can also download tonight’s and many other editions of the programme from there.

One more thing, another occasional feature we have in mind for this year is your answer to the question “what I wish I’d known when I began to lose my sight”. It could be a gadget, could be the existence of an organisation, or just an attitude of mind. The floor is yours. From me, Peter White, producer Cheryl Gabriel and the team, goodbye.

THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

IN TOUCH

TX: 09.01.2018 2040-2100

PRESENTER: PETER WHITE

PRODUCER: CHERYL GABRIEL

White

Good evening. Tonight, it’s often described as the government’s best kept secret. But when it comes to the Access to Work scheme, some blind clients say it’s they who are being kept in the dark. And some of the problems of getting and keeping fit when you’re blind.

Clip

We play the monster game where I sort of chase the children around the house pretending to be a monster and I feel like I’m playing with them, they feel like they’re getting my attention but I feel like it’s still a struggle, I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing in terms of what I need to do to be fit, how much exercise I need. It’s all a bit daunting.

White

We’ll be looking for solutions later in the programme.

But first, the government’s Access to Work scheme is designed to help disabled people compete in the workplace on equal terms. It might be by providing special equipment, or money for extra human support, or assistance with transport. When it works well it can be a massive help. But listeners have been consistently telling us on In Touch that it can also be subject to sudden changes and that when this happens there’s often little support in explaining what you’re supposed to do.

Martin Conway is a social worker in Manchester, whose Access to Work money provides him with someone to help out with various aspects of his job. But now new, unexplained, requirements have suddenly left him without any money to pay his support worker.

Our reporter, Tom Walker, has been to see Martin, who first explained the help his assistant gave him.

Conway

I need help with a range of work tasks. I suppose primarily it’s administrative, so I have a support worker and she works 20 hours a week funded by Access to Work and she will assist me with bits and pieces of admin because despite the improvements in technology I can access much of the database that I need but not all of it. And so, she needs to actually assist me with putting documents in the right place, checking documents, checking reports and we still have to read letters and forms because we still receive them and sometimes actually completing forms as well with people, such as benefit applications.

White

So, Tom, would Martin be able to work without the help of his support worker?

Walker

No, Martin reckons he’d only be able to do about 50% of the tasks associated with his work.

White

So, what’s gone wrong in this case?

Walker

To put things simply, Jasmine has been added to Martin’s employers’ payroll and he reimburses them with the funding he was receiving from Access to Work.

White

But in fact, in this case, Access to Work have stopped reimbursing Martin, which means he can’t pay them?

Walker

They certainly have. Access to Work stopped paying Martin last May because his claim ran out. But that was resolved. But then another problem arose.

Conway

I’ve been told by Access to Work in December that they won’t make any further payments to me until I produce a contract of employment between myself and the support worker. Now this is not something in 25 years of using Access to Work I’ve ever been asked to do. And in fact, although I’m social worker and am reasonably competent I have no real experience in actually drawing up a contract of employment, which normally an HR department would do.

Walker

Have they suggested to you how you might actually go about doing that?

Conway

No, I mean they’ve just literally told me to look on the internet and take a blueprint from there.

Walker

As a result, Martin has built up arrears of around £11,000, which he owes to his employer. Luckily his bosses are being very reasonable and aren’t pushing him to repay the money.

White

So how does he feel about being suddenly required to draw up a contract?

Walker

I put that to Martin and said you know, look, you’re effectively managing a member of staff here, so surely, it’s right that there is a contract of employment in place? And broadly speaking, Martin agrees.

Conway

Well it’s a concern, Tom, because obviously I have now attempted, with my support worker, to draw up a very basic contract of what we think the duties are. And we’ve sent that to Access to Work, now I have no awareness at this stage whether that will be satisfactory for them and if it isn’t obviously I don’t know when or if they’re going to make any further payments and obviously this is all issues that we have to cope with on top of actually doing an existing full-time job and really Access to Work don’t offer any support with any of this.

I’ve always said that the support worker arrangements are far too loose and actually there’s no protection there for the employee or actually for myself because as it stands at the moment without a contract Jasmine could walk out at a moment’s notice or I could fire her at a moment’s notice without any particularly good reason for doing so. So, I think there is a need for a contract but there should maybe be some kind of standard format that they can at least point us in the direction of, having contracts, because obviously there are people who have support workers all over the country and I imagine the arrangements are completely different in each case.

White

So, Tom, what do Access to Work say? Presumably Martin has tried to get in touch with them?

Walker

He certainly has but communicating with them has been – well quite challenging.

Conway

Well it’s very difficult at the moment because when you – you make a call to a call centre, they then say a member of the payments team will ring you back within three hours. Now on the last occasion I attempted this that did happen, I have to say, and the member of the payments team was probably as helpful as he could be but he couldn’t leave me a number by which I could get back to him directly, he couldn’t leave me an email by which I could get back to him directly and so the chances are on the next occasion that I contact the Access to Work and ask for the payments team I could get a completely different person.

White

Well we did ask to talk to a minister at the Department for Work and Pensions but were told no one was available. Instead we were given a statement, which listed some of the improvements Access to Work was offering. For example, last year they launched a digital service to make the application process more accessible and efficient. And there had been a real terms increase in funding which saw an increase of 8% in people declared eligible for the scheme in the last year. But this didn’t address the questions we’d asked about Martin’s case. However, in something labelled ‘further information’ they told us that Mr Conway’s Access to Work had not been stopped and that they would encourage him to raise any concerns regarding the support worker contract with an Access to Work manager. So, when we recorded this yesterday I asked Tom if Martin had done this and what the result had been.

Walker

I spoke to Martin about half an hour ago Peter and since we got involved he’s been put in contact with a senior manager from Access to Work. The senior manager told Martin that they did have some queries regarding his payments but that he should have continued to be paid until they were resolved. The senior manager says he’s going to look into it today and hopefully release at least some payment which should satisfy everybody.

White

Have you spoken to other users of Access to Work and what are the kind of things they say?

Walker

I’ve spoken to a couple of people, Peter, who have fairly similar frustrations, in particular in relation to continuity of service. They phoned the call centre who then, apparently, email a payments team and then somebody phones you back. And you never seem to speak to the same person on consecutive occasions. And people say to me that that’s very frustrating and just makes it very difficult to get hold of the money that you’re actually entitled to.

White

And what are the kind of things that other people say that they’ve had problems with?

Walker

Just getting paid really, things like payments to drivers, payments for support workers. Those are the key things that have been mentioned to me over the past week while I’ve been looking into this story.

White

Tom Walker. Well we’ll continue to press for an interview with the minister about employment of visually-impaired people generally and the Access to Work scheme in particular.

Now, you couldn’t turn on your radio after Christmas without being assailed by keep fit advice. You’ve had your fun, seemed to be the implication, now pay the price. But keeping and staying fit poses particular challenges if you’re visually-impaired, as London parents Hetal and Will have discovered.

Hetal Bapodra described some of the difficulties she faces.

Bapodra

I’d like to be able to keep up with the sheer amount of energy my children have, which has been the biggest surprise about being a parent. My four-and-a-half-year-old literally can keep going from 7.00 a.m. to 7.00 p.m. without stopping and I’m exhausted. I was quite interested, I think, about my existing level of fitness. So, I asked for a Fitbit a couple of Christmas’ ago just to find out really, I was just interested in how many steps I did every day. And I found that I was doing a lot more steps than I thought I was, just walking around after the children. Which I found quite a good way of starting to think about my fitness and understand my fitness. I sort of then realised that actually there are things that I could quite easily fit into my day for fitness, like instead of going to wash my hands downstairs I would go upstairs to wash my hands. I also started to think about how I could play with the children and get my heartrate going, get a bit of a sweat up and we play the monster game where I sort of chase the children around the house, pretending to be a monster, and I feel like I’m playing with them, they feel like they’re getting my attention but I feel like it’s still a struggle, I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing in terms of what I need to do to be fit, how much exercise I need. It’s all a bit daunting and I don’t really have time to go to the gym because when I do have time to myself that time is really precious and often we need to use that time to do life admin, like pay bills or even if it’s been a bad week go and have a nice long bath to relax.

I’m definitely trying and my son started reception this year, so the school run means that I’m going out. So, what I really need is some help on how to stay fit, like how to be fit, what do I need to do to achieve a reasonable level of fitness. So, In Touch, I don’t know if you can help me. Eventually I’d quite like to maybe run a 5K for charity. So, if you can get me fit in 2018 that would be amazing. Help!

White

Well, that’s what we’re here for, no sooner asked than done. Jane Taylor is a visually- impaired fitness coach and we asked Jane what advice she would give to Hetal and thousands like her.

Taylor

I would say running up and down the stairs is particularly good for starting to get fit. It is actually a fantastic form of exercise. The trouble is that it’s a bit mind-numbing to be running up and down the stairs and it’s also extremely hard work to be doing that for anything other than having to do it. So, it’s probably not the best bet in terms of exercise.

I would say at home there’s a couple of things that Hetal might want to look at. Firstly, it’s never been easier to get up and dance. And I cannot overstate how important just doing a little bit of bopping around can be, particularly if you’re somebody who spends most of your time inactive. I know that’s not the case with her. But it’s really easy now, you can just talk to your smart speaker, ask it to stream some music for you, you can choose your own selection and do somewhere between three and five minutes, if that’s all you can manage, which I think is pretty terrific. But honestly, if you’ve got a CD to hand and an old-fashioned CD player it does the job just as well. The important thing is to remember to do it sort of reasonably frequently. The worst thing you can do, if you are worried about being fit, is to sit on your backside and still worry about being fit.

White

Anything else in the way of equipment, I’ll come on to people who don’t want to spend a load of money in equipment in a minute, but anything like that that Hetal and Will and people like them might want to use?

Taylor

Yes, actually home exercise equipment has come down in price really significantly and there’s some good quality gym style machines for in particular heart and lung fitness which are very affordable and will discipline you at home. The fact is once you’ve bought it you’ve got to use it. They don’t take up too much space. My best buys would be a bike, a home exercise bike, or a rower, both of which will give you a decent cardio workout. But remember that neither of those involves strength and balance training overall, which you do also need to do in order to be able to give you the body confidence to be around and outdoors.

White

Now there may be people who don’t want to spend that much money or even don’t think they want to do something as strenuous as that, say perhaps older people, I know there are plenty of fit older people but people perhaps who just want to tone up a bit, maybe even want to do it sitting in their armchair.

Taylor

Okay, so I’m really anti sitting in an armchair.

White

Right.

Taylor

This is one way for sure you are not going to get fit. And probably the worst thing for somebody who feels that their mobility is poor is to spend even longer sitting down. We know this for sure now. So, you’ve got to make that effort, if necessary use an alarm system of some sort to remind you every half an hour. Get up, stand up, move around, jiggle your legs around, walk up the stairs and back down again, if you have stairs, anything it doesn’t actually have to be a huge amount of things that you do but that will make a big difference to your level of health related fitness. If you can manage to do that every half an hour or so.

White

Okay, so what about the many visually-impaired people who are quite happy to go out, might really rather do something with other people if they could find somewhere that was welcoming and where there was the kind of exercise and equipment that was reasonably easy for them to use?

Taylor

Okay so my first best bet here would be to see what’s going on in your local park. Outdoors is always fantastic and remember psychologically it lifts your mood as well and that’s really important if you feel unfit and out of the swim. The park runs set up, which is this regular sort of weekend 5K number that goes on in lots of parks, they have a great people infrastructure among local volunteers now and I suggest if you get on the website and have a look for a local park run.

White

What about swimming, some people swear by swimming as being the kind of all pervasive way to get fit, other blind people I know, and I’m one of them, really rather shrink at the idea of swimming pools and all that standing on one leg putting your pants back on. What – how much does that help and are there alternatives?

Taylor

Swimming is a phenomenal cardiovascular all-round body exercise. So, if it’s your kind of thing and if the pool doesn’t freak you out and if you don’t keep bumping into everyone else then go-ahead swim. My best secret alternative, which I’ve been doing for years and years, is basically walking or running in deep water. I hug the side of the swimming pool, so I use the length but I stay right by the edge and that kind of indicates if I’m in the slow lane at the edge that anyone can go past me because I’m going to be the slowest in the pool. But when you are walking or running in deep water the idea is that not to go quickly, it’s going to be hard, hard work to go at all, so you’re making pace very slowly but you’re working incredibly hard. The harder you go the harder the water pushes back against you – I love it.

White

And you’ve got another thing you’re very keen on I think which is this idea of Nordic walking?

Taylor

Yeah, this is a brilliant form of exercise for people who are a bit more willing to be more adventurous, particularly over rougher ground. Bear in mind if you want to improve your balance going walking over uneven ground is a great way of doing it. With the Nordic walking you also get the two great big long poles, which help to stabilise you, and they help you to go faster and further with this feeling of kind of really flying along. There are loads of Nordic walking groups and again you need to look online and see whether you can get yourself in touch with one of the instructors just for a few basic exercise training sessions in how to get up to speed and then see if you can get yourself in with a group.

White

Gyms, we’ve done it before, it’s a separate subject but if you were summing it up in two sentences what would you say?

Taylor

People tend to be self-selecting when it comes to gyms. If you are trying a gym for the first time phone first, insist on speaking to the gym manager, make sure somebody is going to help and guide you around when you first go. If you need two or three wandering around trips, just to get your navigation, to get your orientation make sure you’re able to do that. Try to get a short subscription, don’t sign up for a year, alright, there are ways of getting around this and make sure above all that there is a suitably qualified trainer who can set your gym programme for you.

White

And finally, back to Hetal. She said she wanted to run a 5K before the end of this year. A good aim, easy to do?

Taylor

Not easy but it’s a great aim. And having a specific goal really, really helps. Try getting in touch with British Blind Sport because they run a find-a-guide scheme. They will introduce you to a tether, which is a great way of starting off your running. And they might be able to bring you up to speed for your 5K or try the park run people, as I mentioned before.

White

And Hetal if you do it perhaps you’d stay in touch with us and let us know how you get on.

That was Jane Taylor and no doubt we’ll be returning to the subject throughout the year.

Tell us your own strategies for staying fit. You can call our action line on 0800 044 044 for 24 hours after tonight’s programme. You can email in touch@bbc.co.uk or you can click on contact us on our website, that’s www.bbc.co.uk/intouch. You can also download tonight’s and many other editions of the programme from there.

One more thing, another occasional feature we have in mind for this year is your answer to the question “what I wish I’d known when I began to lose my sight”. It could be a gadget, could be the existence of an organisation, or just an attitude of mind. The floor is yours. From me, Peter White, producer Cheryl Gabriel and the team, goodbye.