Meet Ailsa, who brings recovery support outdoors and into the heart of her community

Ailsa Wilson doesn’t have an office. She meets the people she supports wherever suits them best, often out on a walk with her dog alongside.

There’s a good reason. Ailsa is a recovery worker with WithYou in Argyll and Bute, covering Campbeltown and Islay.

In rural communities everybody knows everybody. Stigma around drugs and alcohol can stop people asking for help. Some might worry about being seen walking into a building marked “drug and alcohol service”.

People struggle with stigma everywhere, but especially in small towns like Campbeltown,” she said. “If you go for a walk with somebody and a dog, nobody questions it. It makes you more anonymous.

Ailsa also lives in the community she works in. She came to this work by a winding route. After years in youth work, including outreach with young people on alcohol, and time as a carer, she joined a Rape Crisis service in Argyll and Bute. 

There, she noticed that someone she supported could communicate far more easily sitting by the water than in an office. When that job ended, she looked for a qualification that matched her passion for nature and the outdoors and trained in ecotherapy and forest therapy.

Ailsa almost didn’t join WithYou though. When a role came up in 2020, she worried the paperwork would be beyond her. A phone call from someone already working here changed that.

Six years on and no two weeks are the same for Ailsa. 

She supports people one to one, runs groups, helps organise community events and works in partnership with GPs and other local services. 

Nature is a big part of her role too. A few times a year, she leads sessions in the woods in Kintyre. People throw stones into the river, build a fire, cook lunch together, make crafts and spend time among the trees.

Ailsa believes that bringing people together matters most. “Isolation is so harmful to people,” she said. “You need to have connections. If you can get people together, it doesn’t seem to matter what you do with them. Every time we’ve done a group, they just like being together.”

In the woods, nobody has to talk about anything they’re not ready to. “You’re talking about a tree, or you’re talking about the river,” Ailsa said. “But by doing that, you’re talking about yourself.”

Green prescribing, as this approach is known, is a recognised, evidence-based way to support recovery and mental health alongside more traditional treatment.

What keeps Ailsa in her job is simple. “It’s the people,” she said. “Making a difference to even one person is what keeps me going.”

That commitment has taken her well beyond Kintyre. For several weeks last year, Ailsa travelled to Islay to run a recovery skills group. That meant the morning ferry, a day of appointments, an evening session from 6pm to 8pm and a 5am start the next day to get home. 

“People have always said nobody would attend a group on Islay because of the stigma,” she said. “But they did, and it went really well.”

Keeping a group like that going long-term in such a remote part of Scotland was challenging, but it’s still one of the things Ailsa is proudest of.

She also helped organise Kintyre’s first recovery walk in 2023. 

“Walking through the streets of Campbeltown, shouting and yelling with a big banner, was amazing,” she said. A group from Kintyre also attended the recovery walk in Glasgow the following year, setting off by bus at 6am and returning home after 9pm.

In September, WithYou held a Woodland Wellbeing Day at Glenbarr, organised by Ailsa. There was yoga, mindfulness, a riverside walk to a labyrinth trail, a fireside picnic and head massage in the woods.

It was partly a thank you to everyone who took part in a short film about this work, made last year, which went on to win a coveted media award.

In that film, Kara Jane Pope, who has been supported by Ailsa and the WithYou team, spoke about what Ailsa means to her. 

She said: “I love Ailsa. She’s been a big part of my recovery and my journey. I probably wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for Ailsa and WithYou.

If you’re based in Argyll and Bute and you’d like to find out more about our free, confidential support, visit wearewithyou.org.uk/local-hubs/argyll-and-bute