Essex Care Consortium: Colchester site is a specialist resource registered to provide living accommodation and care for up to nineteen clients with learning disabilities, who have complex needs, aged eighteen or over. Accommodation consists of two separate houses known as Cedar House and Birch House and two separate registered self‐contained flats.
Essex Care Consortium is an Inclusive Communication environment and considerable importance is placed on encouraging personal expression, language and interaction. Our Inclusive Communication team works closely with the staff and clients in Cedar House and Birch House. They develop intensive communication strategies and experiment with different ways to gain their attention and hold their interest, in order to encourage greater confidence in self-expression. Gaps in development can be identified and work begun around concepts such as expressing individual wishes and needs, making choices, setting personal boundaries and beginning to work towards the development of more practical skills.
The Colchester site has 11 rural acres of natural beauty with extensive grounds, gardens, wooded walks, a large sports field, picnic areas and the sensory garden. The grounds are a natural habitat for many kinds of wildlife including protected species. The unique location of this setting enables clients to experience considerable personal space and freedom in surroundings that are conducive to growth, development and healing.

The site is shared with our Daycentre, Access, and our Training Centre PiP, which are both housed in separate buildings. Access takes clients from both our sites as well as the wider community, and PiP offers a broad range of training across the Health and Care sector.