Independent Living Skills Training
Living on your own is not one skill. It is about forty of them, learned in a specific order, most of which nobody is ever formally taught. We teach them where they happen — in a real kitchen, on a real bus, with a real bank account.
The skills a home actually runs on
We start from your goals and your living situation, then work in order of what unlocks the most independence soonest.
Home & self care
Showering, dressing, laundry, tidying, bins, and the maintenance routines that keep a place liveable rather than gradually becoming unliveable.
Cooking & food
Meal planning, shopping lists, safe use of appliances, batch cooking, food storage and what to do when cooking is beyond you that day. Built around what you actually eat.
Money & admin
Budgeting, banking, bills, subscriptions, benefits paperwork, and the letters that pile up unopened. Systems, reminders and someone to sit with you the first few times.
Getting around
Halifax Transit route planning, practising a journey, Access-A-Bus, taxis and rideshare, and building the confidence to go somewhere new alone.
Safety & emergencies
Fire safety, medication routines, who to call and when, answering the door, online safety, and recognising a situation that has become unsafe.
Community & connection
Appointments, groups, work, volunteering and friendships. Independence with nobody in it is isolation, and we treat connection as a living skill in its own right.
Where this usually comes up
Teens & young adults moving out
Leaving home, moving into supported living, or heading to college or university. Best started a year or two before the move, not the week of it.
Adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities
Building the skills that reduce paid support hours over time, and that make a DSP plan a route to independence rather than a permanent arrangement.
After injury, illness or a change in health
Relearning tasks after a stroke, brain injury, surgery or a mental health crisis — graded, and with equipment or technique changes where relearning is not the answer.
Anyone whose supports have changed
A parent who can no longer provide what they used to, a partner who has left, a support worker who has gone. Skills that were covered by someone else, suddenly needed.
In the real place, in real time
Assess in context
We watch the task in your kitchen, not describe it in an office. What breaks down is usually a step nobody thought to mention.
Break it down
Every task becomes a sequence, with the specific steps that need support identified rather than the whole task being supervised.
Support that fades
Prompting is planned to reduce from the first session — visual, then verbal, then nothing. Support that never fades is not teaching.
Generalise it
A skill that only works with us present is not a skill. We practise across days, settings and people until it holds without us.
Independent living skills — common questions
Is this only for people with a disability?
No. Anyone whose daily living skills are not where they need to be can benefit — after an illness, a mental health crisis, a brain injury, or simply because nobody ever taught them. That said, much of this work is with autistic and intellectually disabled teens and adults, and with people in or entering the Disability Support Program.
Where do sessions happen?
Wherever the skill lives. Your home, a shop, a bus route, a bank, a laundromat. Some planning and review is done virtually, but the teaching itself works best in the real environment, and that is where we go.
Can support workers or family be involved?
They should be. If the people around you keep doing the task for you, the teaching will not stick — not through any bad intent, but because helping is a hard habit to break. We coach families and direct support professionals on how to step back at the right rate.
How is this different from having a support worker?
A support worker helps the task get done. An occupational therapist works out why it is not being done independently, and builds the plan, adaptations and teaching that make it possible. The two work well together — often we design and the support worker delivers.
Can this be funded through DSP?
Sometimes, depending on your plan and arrangement. Skill development is exactly the kind of goal the program is intended to support, and it is one of the things we set out in a DSP clinical consultation. Bring your plan to the free consultation and we will look at it with you.
Start with one skill
Book a free 20-minute consultation and tell us what part of daily life is not working. That is the whole starting point.