A big hello from Mid and North Essex Mind, your local mental health charity. You might’ve once known us as either ‘Colchester Mind’ or ‘Mid Essex Mind’. At the beginning of this year, Colchester Mind acquired the charity Mid Essex Mind, this means the two charities have now come together. Our new name is Mid and North Essex Mind.
Our new name describes the area we now cover a bit better – Colchester, Tendring, Maldon, Braintree and Chelmsford districts.
We work with children from the age of 5 and adults of all ages. Some people use our services for only a little while and others might need help for longer.
We provide a number of services across Essex including counselling, practical support around things like debt, job seeking and housing, peer support groups as well as a number of different services for children and young people who are experiencing poor emotional wellbeing.
Not all of our service are available across the whole of our ‘patch’ yet but we’re working hard on this and making sure we’re speaking to the right commissioners to help put this right. This also means we really need the support of the voluntary income raised by our local community – you skydivers, bakers, fun-runners, trekkers, pub quizzers and collection pot holders, you will make a difference to the people we can help. Any money you raise or donate will be spent locally, we are not a national charity – we’re here for the people of Essex.
It’s good for us to explain what our relationship is with the national charity Mind. We are connected to it but we are an independent charity which means we have to raise our own money to help children and adults in our local area. Our funding doesn’t come from the national charity.
Mind does a great job in campaigning, researching and lobbying on mental health as well as providing online support and telephone help, so money raised for them is well spent.
But if you want your donations or fundraising to be spent and benefit people locally then make sure you support us as your local Mind. Visit our support us pages to find out a little more about what you can do to help.