Working towards Independent Living Skills is undertaken at each participant’s individual skills and abilities.

At Reach & Belong our Independent Living Skills Activities for Melbourne participants include a range of tasks to help participants develop the confidence and skills to be able to take better care of themselves when it comes to daily life.

Our friendly small groups work from both our community centres and also amongst the community.

What’s on Offer

The different Independent Living Skills include visits to the supermarkets, travelling on public transport, developing employment skills, learning about sustainability and recycling plus working on chores, developing daily routines, meal planning, nutrition and preparation, safe food storage and handling and budgets. This also helps to develop Numeracy and Literacy Skills.

You have a choice of Cooking programs — either in a group working in a commercial kitchen or else online, cooking in your own kitchen. We LOVE our cooking programs — they are so much fun and the online cooking program came about from lockdowns. But when lockdowns finished everyone wanted to stay online. The plusses are working in your own kitchen, cooking with family or a support worker and having younger siblings duck in during the session and become official taste testers.

Independent Living Skills focus on Interest, Needs and Outcomes

We are always tweaking and modifying our Independent Living Skills offerings.

If your group wants to spend another week doing meal preparations we will make the changes to do that.

Last Christmas everyone wanted to know how to set a Christmas table using items around the home and following a budget. It was the little things that made the difference — ironing the tablecloth, showing how to fold paper napkins into some very easy but very impressive designs, creating a centrepiece that had that ‘wow’ factor.

We always have fun but we always have outcomes — our Independent Living Skills programs are tailored to what you want to achieve. And for everyone that is different.

Our group size numbers are capped and by remaining small we can be nimble in what we design and develop each week.

Want to join us for some Independent Living Skills sessions?

Fill in the FORM at the bottom of our Activities page and we’ll be in touch.