Vibrant Health Advocates - Vega works alongside low-income households in Hamilton to connect the dots between benefits entitlement, home energy support, and everyday health — because in Lanarkshire, cold and poverty too often go hand in hand.
Get in touch with usEvery winter in Hamilton, families face a choice no one should have to make: heat the home or feed the children. Vibrant Health Advocates - Vega has spent years sitting at kitchen tables across South Lanarkshire with the people who know that dilemma first-hand. We are a small, locally rooted Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation, and our work is straightforward — we find the households that have slipped through the gaps, we work out what support they are entitled to, and we help them claim it.
Read our story →Every winter in Hamilton, families face a choice no one should have to make: heat the home or feed the children. Vibrant Health Advocates - Vega has spent years sitting at kitchen tables across South Lanarkshire with the people who know that dilemma first-hand.
We find the households that have slipped through the gaps, we work out what support they are entitled to, and we help them claim it. That means benefits checks, warm-home grant applications, energy tariff advice, referrals to health and social services, and the kind of patient, unhurried conversation that gives people the confidence to act.
We do not operate a helpline from a distance. We show up.
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We guide Hamilton households through every available route to a warmer home — from the Scottish Government's Warmer Homes Scotland scheme to utility trust funds and local authority grants. Families we work with have saved hundreds of pounds annually on heating bills and avoided the health consequences of a cold, damp house.
Unclaimed benefits are one of the biggest hidden problems in low-income communities, and Hamilton is no exception. Our advisers carry out full household benefit entitlement checks, helping families access everything from Pension Credit and Universal Credit top-ups to Carer's Allowance and Disability Living Allowance they never knew they qualified for.
Cold homes drive hospital admissions, worsen asthma and cardiovascular disease, and deepen mental health struggles. We connect the households we support directly to NHS Lanarkshire health pathways, community pharmacies, mental health services, and food-bank partnerships, making sure that financial and physical health are treated as the same problem.
Vibrant Health Advocates - Vega grew out of a recognition — shared by a group of Hamilton residents, a retired GP, and a former housing officer — that the town's most vulnerable households were being failed not by a lack of available support, but by a lack of anyone to join it up.
Families were missing out on thousands of pounds in benefits, living in homes that a relatively modest grant could have made habitable, and attending A&E with conditions that proper heating and a stable income would have prevented.
Our full story →"Vibrant Health Advocates - Vega exists to protect the health and wellbeing of low-income households in Hamilton by ensuring that no family is left without the benefits they are entitled to, the warm home they need, or the health support that can make a real difference to their lives."
