Braintree Partners

BOSP supports children and young adults with complex disabilities or life-limiting conditions, and their families, by providing high-quality, fun, educational activities, respite, peer support and counselling.

Caring and supporting people with a learning disability, their families and carers in the Braintree District which includes Witham, Halstead and surrounding villages.

We offer a wide range of leisure and educational classes for adults with a learning disability. Our Gateway Club runs every Thursday and is a social gathering of around 100 people, with a different activity every week.

Crossroads Braintree and Chelmsford provides the following services for family carers in Mid-Essex. 

Respite Sitting Service 

Befriending Service 

Respite Day Care for older people 

We provide emotional, practical support, advice and guidance. 

We provide Essex residents (excluding Southend-On-Sea and Thurrock) with access to health checks; stop smoking services; weight management courses; and emotional health and wellbeing support. All of our services are free.

We are an independent, parent-led charity, providing specialist and person-centred support to families who have a child or young person with any special educational need or disability (SEND). We can offer:

• Information and advice, and a helpline;
• One to one support including assistance with Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and Personal Independence Payments (PIP) applications;
• Independent parental support on all educational issues includes assessments, education health care plans and exclusions;
• Support through group activities including a Saturday Activity Club.

We give parents and their children a voice, and help families to navigate the system and access exactly what they are entitled to. We work alongside families, to empower and give confidence. 

“I honestly believe the support and guidance you provide is invaluable. I can’t thank you enough. I felt so supported and understood. When I couldn’t turn to others I could to Families InFocus.”

Our service is free to access, and anyone from Essex who has a child or young person with any SEND can get in touch.

Home-Start Essex aims to give children the best possible start in life by supporting parents and caregivers to feel less isolated, to build their confidence in themselves and their parenting and to find ways to manage the challenges they face. We build trusting, helpful relationships with families and deliver a range of flexible support to meet their individual needs, including volunteer-led home visiting, family groups, wellbeing services, school-readiness, and behaviour support programmes.

Kids Inspire is a children’s mental health charity supporting children and young people aged 4-18 from low-income households and their families navigating mental health challenges and trauma. We do this through creative and arts-based trauma informed therapies, mentoring and community-based activities.  

Kooth.com is commissioned to provide an online wellbeing platform which along with text based counselling also includes helpful articles, forums, activity centre, daily journal and messaging. We provide British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy accredited services and Kooth is available to young people aged 11-18 in Essex. 

The service provides a free and non-judgemental place for children and young people to connect with others and know they are not alone. They have instant access to self-help materials, fully moderated discussion forums and tools such as online journals and goal trackers. They can also contribute written pieces of work reflecting their own experiences, as well as accessing drop-in or booked text-based counselling sessions with professional counsellors.

These are online services that offer anonymised support via online counsellors, available 365 days a year, 12pm -10pm on weekdays and 6pm-10pm on weekends. 

The Salvation Army is a Christian church and charity, and we exist to love God and to love Others. In our community, we offer community and practical support to people of all ages, without discrimination. Coffee mornings, friendship groups, parent and toddler groups, an emergency food bank and support for those experiencing homelessness.

Partnering with parents, we support families whose children have additional needs or disabilities by providing compassion, guidance and hope.