Founded on Dignity,
Driven by Purpose

With over 55 years of experience, we focus on the empowerment of the individual through a holistic therapeutic approach.

Established in 1970, we have over fifty five years experience of working alongside young people and adults who have learning disabilities, supporting them in coming to terms with both their learning disabilities and the impact of any additional emotional trauma, or mental health issues within their lives. This is achieved through the development of appropriate living and working environments that facilitate the personal growth necessary for self-fulfilment and empowerment.

Essex Care Consortium is an independent, therapeutic resource registered with The Care Quality Commission – our main site is at Birch, near Colchester, Essex. We provide a wide range of specialist residential care and day services for people with learning disabilities, who have complex needs aged 18 and above.

Essex Care Consortium has three residential sites: 'Essex Care Consortium Ltd: Colchester' This is our main site located near Birch, which is ten minutes outside Colchester town. We have two residential houses: 'Cedar' and 'Birch', and seven beautiful spacious single service registered flats. Our Learning Centre Access takes students with learning disabilities from the wider communities of Colchester, Braintree and Maldon as well as from our three residential sites. Our head office and main administration is also based on the Colchester site, which provides administration, maintenance, learning, training and leisure support and facilities across the whole organization.

'Essex Care Consortium Ltd: Marks Tey' Our Marks Tey site has two further residential bungalows: 'The Laurels' and 'The Vines' and an independent registered flat, 'Station Rd. Flat'. 'Essex Care Consortium Ltd : Prettygate' Our Prettgate site is a four-bedded registered house in Plume Avenue, Prettygate, five minutes from Colchester centre by car.

Our principle aims are to empower and promote the personal autonomy of the people we work alongside. We acknowledge and uphold the intrinsic value of each person as a unique individual. We believe that all people should be accorded an equal degree of acceptance, personal freedom and opportunity for individual growth and development, regardless of their perceived physical, intellectual or emotional ability. We recognise this has not always been the experience of people who have a learning disability, many of whom have historically experienced additional and disempowering burdens of social inequality, segregation, prejudice, personal trauma and mistreatment.

In our experience, people with learning disabilities who constantly present behaviours that challenge or who struggle to reach achievable goals, frequently have additional unidentified problems or issues that underline their difficulties. These stumbling blocks are either simply unrecognisable or more often hidden within the generic diagnosis of their particular disability. We are committed to helping clients identify and address any unrecognised issue or difficulty that is a cause of distress, which in turn will help to empower the person to make informed decisions affecting their current and future life. We are committed to a high degree of social and developmental interaction with our clients and our Inclusive Communication Environment, Our communication team focuses on developing the communication and language skills of our clients and staff in all aspects of our provision.

For many years we have been actively involved in promoting equal rights for the people we work alongside, being both instrumental in bringing about change and contributing on many levels to the wider process of reform. This work includes involvement at local level with many committees and organisations and consultation work for national bodies such as the General Social Care Council.