Mid Essex Children's Partnership
Connecting Families to Free and Low-Cost Activities
Active Essex is proud to be part of the Mid Essex Children’s Partnership Board, working collectively to ensure every child gets the best start in life and opportunities to Be Well and Feel Well.
The partnership brings organisations together to share services, identify common challenges, and collaborate on practical solutions that improve outcomes for families across Mid Essex.
Through our involvement with the Board and its sub-groups, Active Essex has played a key role in improving access to free and low-cost activities during the school holidays. Chelmsford is part of the Mid children's partnership board, alongside Braintree and Maldon, which brings partners together to share exciting and important services, identify common challenges and work collaboratively to overcome them. Rather than creating new provision, the focus was on bringing together existing opportunities in one clear, accessible place, helping families better understand what was available locally.
Active Essex convened and chaired the steering group, providing strong strategic leadership that created a shared vision and maintained momentum across partners. Through effective coordination and partnership working, activities were collated from a wide range of organisations, improving visibility for families while reducing duplication and building trusted relationships. Active Essex also led on the design and production of the Family Summer Booklet, managing both print and digital distribution to maximise reach and accessibility.
The partnership is convened by Children’s Social Care and includes Essex Family and Child Wellbeing Service, local authorities, CVS organisations, youth services, libraries, ECVYS, family charities, Public Health, the NHS, and other community partners.
Key Learnings
It's important to take time to reflect and understand the learnings from work undertaken, to focus on ways to improve in the future.
Strong Community Activity Base
Lots of activity already happens locally, and increasing visibility helps maximise its impact.
Value of early engagement
Starting with shared goals and ownership strengthens how partnerships deliver together.
Clarity through consistent design
Using a unified design and approach makes information clearer and more accessible.
Need for information gathering
Different methods of event recording highlighted the need for a more consistent process.
Feedback built in early
Collecting feedback would be more effective if planned from the start.
Understanding format preferences
Knowing whether families prefer printed or digital materials remains crucial for communication.
The work was shared at the Essex Children’s Partnership Board, demonstrating the potential for replication across other areas. The approach also enabled quick mobilisation of an online winter events page, featuring 45 activities and receiving 846 views.
The partnership aims to continue adapting the booklet for future school holidays, strengthening collaboration and refining feedback and data collection to further improve impact.
