This program was designed with the intention to make parents and teachers aware that a child’s eye health and vision ability is an important part of learning, function, performance, growth and needs to be checked. Many people are unaware that eye exams are covered by the government health care yearly for children through the age of 19.

ESEL is made for JK students age 4 registered with the school that after an eye exam with a registered optometrist participating in this program if glasses are needed for vision correction, the program provides them free of cost to the patient from a selection of frames.

**The only thing to keep in mind is that many optometrists in Windsor-Essex do participate in this program but NOT ALL of them.  If the child needs glasses in this age group the eye exam must be done with an ESEL participating optometrist for it to be approved per the ESEL regulations.

Quick points to remember for parents of current and future JK Students:

Every child is covered under OHIP(health card) for one eye exam with an optometrist per year free of charge until age 19.

Vision is an integral part of a child’s development in all aspects: learning, motor, spatial awareness, functioning, integrating.

Children do not know what normal vision is and usually cannot tell you something is wrong. Their body tries to adapt in other ways to overcome the problem and this can lead to many symptoms:
   Squinting/too close to page for reading/focusing issues/
   Holding ipad too close/relying on hearing vs vision/
   Being out of tune when teaching/hyperactive during learning.

Be aware that age 4 is not too young for an eye exam and many conditions can be discovered through a full comprehensive exam.

In one sentence: Get eye exam before entering JK, Free eye exam covered by OHIP, Free pair of glasses if needed to a JK registered student age 4 by a participating ESEL optometrist. 

Source: http://holycrosslasalle.blogspot.com/2017/02/free-eye-exam-and-glasses.html