Find information and guidance on getting help, volunteering, work, money, benefits and staying well during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Essex Wellbeing Service (EWS) offers a single point of access to practical, emotional and specialist support. All Essex residents, including parents and families, can use this service.

If you or someone you know needs advice, EWS provides support with:

  • feelings of loneliness or isolation
  • debt, housing or employment questions
  • parenting and family matters
  • caring responsibilities
  • mental wellbeing
  • learning disability/autism
  • dementia care
  • sensory impairment
  • quitting smoking
  • keeping physically active

Call: 0300 303 9988
Website: essexwellbeingservice.co.uk

Opening hours:
Monday to Friday, 8am to 7pm
Saturday and Sunday, 10am to 2pm

Community Hubs across Essex are helping vulnerable residents during coronavirus. They can help you if don’t have family and friends to support you with basic tasks such as shopping for food and other support needs.

Find a Community Hub near you.

United in Kind helps people across Essex work together to reconnect with our neighbours and communities to help overcome loneliness.

Thurrock Council are working with partners in Thurrock to provide help for those most in need during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

Thurrock Coronavirus Community Action is a partnership led by the council, Stronger Together and Thurrock CVS, working with local organisations to safely coordinate support and volunteers.

They can help with:

  • shopping for food
  • collecting medicines
  • social contact

Separately, if you are employed or self-employed on a low income and have to self-isolate at home, you may be entitled to a one-off Test and Trace Support payment.

Call: 01375 511 002
Website: thurrock.gov.uk/coronavirus-covid-19-community-support/thurrock-coronavirus-community-action

Opening hours:
Monday to Friday, 9am to 3pm,
Closed on Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays.

BAMEStream is an alliance of practitioners, therapists, policy specialists, organisations, activists and academia who specialise in the areas of mental health and wellbeing and who’s core purpose during this COVID-19 pandemic is to bring the mental health needs of the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic community into the mainstream. Ubele has supported the launch of BAMEStream as one of the responses to the impacts of COVID-19.

COVID-19 is having a devastating impact and BAMEStream have come together to support the development and delivery of mental health and wellbeing services to ensure that the needs of our local communities are being met as a result of this pandemic and crisis.

A FREE Bereavement Support Service has now been launched. It is being provided by our BAMEStream alliance member Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre. Nafsiyat will provide FREE culturally competent brief emotional online support to anyone from a Black, Asian or other Minority Ethnic background experiencing bereavement and loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They offer therapeutic support in over 20 different languages. If you have been affected by the death of a loved one due to COVID-19 and need support, please visit www.bamestream.org.uk

Working with people from the BAME Community we see first-hand the toll that COVID-19 is having on people’s mental and emotional wellbeing, especially around death, bereavement and grief. BAMEStream is responding to an urgent need for easy access to culturally competent practitioners, counsellors and therapists.