Caroline Anawate, Ali Pierucci, Juliet McCrudden and Ahnisa Klu of Sanare

Life Skills & Independent Living Skills Coaching

What are life skills?

Life skills are the everyday abilities that make living on your own work: taking care of your body, keeping a home, managing money, getting places, handling appointments. Most people pick them up without noticing. For adults living with mental illness, autism or a long stretch of being unwell, some of these skills never fully developed or got lost along the way.

Without them, independence doesn't hold. A person can get an apartment and lose it six months later over unpaid rent or a landlord complaint. Life skills coaching is about making independence last.

Areas we work on

  • Personal care. Showering, grooming, clean clothes and dental care, built into a routine that holds on low days.

  • Food. Planning meals, grocery shopping on a budget, simple cooking, and food safety.

  • Home. Cleaning, laundry, dishes, trash day and keeping things from piling up.

  • Money. Budgeting, paying bills on time, banking, and avoiding late fees and scams.

  • Health. Scheduling and getting to appointments, refilling prescriptions, and talking with doctors.

  • Getting around. Learning bus routes, using RTD, ride apps, and planning trips.

  • Paperwork. Benefits, insurance, leases and the mail.

  • Safety. What to do in an emergency, who to call, and keeping important information handy.

Learning by doing

You can't learn to grocery shop from a handout. Sanare clinicians teach life skills in the places they're used. That means going to King Soopers together with a list and a budget, cooking a meal in the client's kitchen, or sitting at the computer to set up automatic bill pay.

Each skill is practiced until it's routine, then support steps back. The goal is for the client to do it without us.

Visits happen one to five times a week with a team of at least two clinicians. Life skills coaching often goes hand in hand with executive functioning coaching, and it's a big part of our work with autistic adults, people living with schizophrenia and young adults who are stuck.

Life skills coaching in Denver

Sanare works with adults 18 and older across the Denver and Boulder metro. Contact us or call 303.476.1974.