Independent Living Support

Independent Living Support (ILS) is unique to Dumfries and Galloway and has provided outreach services to vulnerable people since 2002, receiving charitable status in 2006, providing a mixture of holistic practical and emotional one to one support and educational, cultural, social and or physical group activities. The service is provided to vulnerable people, 16 years and over, in their home or the community to address need, encourage self-management and support resilience.

Our offices are based on George Street Meuse in Dumfries (see picture below) on Hanover Street in Stranraer and we have use of Lincluden Community Centre for group activities.

We try to be as flexible as possible so ring the doorbell or knock the office door if you’re passing; if we don’t answer we are out on business. See our contact details page for how to get in touch with us.

Over the last twenty years ILS has provided a plethora of long and short-term services in response to the people we serve. Historically one of the first services to address fuel poverty, we have provided counselling services, sand therapy as well as seven years delivering a highly successful housing support service on behalf of Dumfries & Galloway Council.

Our staff clock up 173 years’ experience in a variety of health and social care settings; we specialise in addiction, mental health, offenders, ASN and youths and pride themselves on offering meaningful, lifechanging support to encourage people to live as independently as possible thus move from

”simply surviving to actively thriving”.

Our current services are:

GoBeDo youth service – consistently funded by The Holywood Trust and The Robertson Trust this successful service blends holistic one to one support and bi-monthly group work activities for people aged 16 to 25 years.
It’s All About You! – emerged from our specific housing support services and blends one to one outreach support and group activities delivered in partnership with our Peer Support Mentors. Our experiences in housing support led us to encourage life-long skills, develop self-effectiveness and provide navigation and advocacy to live independently from complex and overburdened NHS, Social Work, care and benefits systems.
Peer Support – This service evolved from our additional mental wellbeing worker position attached to our housing support service in Dumfries. There appears to be an appetite for self management and for people giving and receiving support and ILS are currently developing a peer support mentor training programme in partnership with the Scottish Recovery Network and We Are With You! We currently have eight peer support mentors graduating from a five-month Peer 2 Peer training course.

Please have a look around our website, read our client testimonials.

On our referrals page you will find a referral form and we will publish whether our services are open for referrals. We encourage people to refer themselves, please give us as much information as you can on the referral form

Dumfries Office