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About The Essex Hub

Prevention-focused community infrastructure for Mid Essex.

The Essex Hub CIC is a community interest company serving Mid Essex — Brentwood, Maldon and Chelmsford. We work as a backbone commissioning organisation: we hold the funding, safeguarding, policies and referral relationships centrally, and commission independent delivery partners at arm's length to do the work they're good at.

The missing middle

Most support sits at two ends. Everyday pastoral support at one. Specialist and crisis services at the other. Between them is a gap that schools, GPs and statutory services don't currently fill — the point where someone is past everyday stress but below the threshold for specialist help.

That gap is where we work. Structured, measured early intervention for the people who fall into it.

What we do

We don't deliver the sessions ourselves. We commission vetted, qualified delivery partners to do that, and we hold everything around them: safeguarding, referral routing, consent, quality assurance and outcomes measurement.

A commissioner contracts the Hub. The Hub commissions the right partner. Accountability sits in one place.

What we are not

Not a directory or listings platform

Not a community page or social media hub

Not a direct delivery organisation — we commission, we don't deliver

Not a crisis intervention service

Who we help

Children and young people with SEMH or SEND needs, school avoiders, and home-educated children

Adults experiencing low mood, anxiety, stress or isolation

Retired people seeking community connection

People living with dementia, and the families around them

How we keep it safe and prove it works

Safeguarding is held at Hub level, not left to individual partners. We operate a designated-safeguarding-lead-led framework with a written safeguarding policy referenced in our formal commissioning agreements. Delivery partners are DBS-checked and qualified, commissioned at arm's length under service agreements.

We measure outcomes with SWEMWBS — the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale — alongside attendance and distance-travelled data, applied from the first session. Commissioners get outcomes, not anecdotes.

Where we work

Mid Essex — Brentwood, Maldon and Chelmsford — is our starting footprint. Direct commissions aren't geographically capped: where there's funding and fit, we commission beyond it.

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