Centre of Inclusive Wellbeing
Welcome to Essential Space
Essential Space is an inclusive mental health, counselling and wellbeing service supporting adults, children, young people and families across Gloucestershire, alongside online counselling and therapeutic support across the UK.
At the heart of Essential Space is a simple belief: everyone should have the opportunity to access therapeutic support, regardless of their financial circumstances, identity, background or individual beliefs and needs.
Accessible support that meets you where you are
We know that the cost of counselling, mentoring and therapeutic support can sometimes be a barrier to getting help. This is why we offer a low cost to full cost sliding scale, asking people to consider what they can realistically and sustainably afford to pay for their sessions.
Those who are able to pay towards the higher end of our scale help us to continue offering lower-cost sessions to people who need them. This creates a community model that enables us to make good-quality therapeutic support accessible to more people.
But accessibility is about much more than cost
We recognise that everyone comes to therapy with their own experiences, circumstances, identities, communication styles and ways of understanding themselves and the world around them. Our aim is to provide a welcoming, flexible and inclusive service where the whole person is considered. Our main therapy hub is at Kingsley House, between Cheltenham and Gloucester which provides us with ten therapy rooms, including ground-floor spaces for people with accessibility or mobility requirements. We also have a space available to us to use in Stonehouse and Stroud, and we are also able to offer online support to anyone living in the UK.
How Essential Space began
Essential Space grew from conversations about what was missing within traditional counselling and mental health services.
As practitioners, we became increasingly aware that cost, accessibility and the way services were structured could prevent people from receiving the therapeutic support they needed. We listened – and Essential Space grew from there.
In 2019, we began with a therapy centre in Cheltenham. By early 2020, we had started offering reduced-cost counselling sessions. Over the years that followed, our work continued to develop in response to what people in our community told us they needed.
Today, Essential Space reaches far beyond the counselling room.
Alongside our low-cost counselling service, we provide mentoring, creative mentoring and therapeutic approaches, neuro-affirming support, LGBTQIA+ support, therapeutic groups, community projects, professional training and student clinical counselling placements. We also work collaboratively with schools, community organisations, GP surgeries, health services and other organisations across Gloucestershire to help people access support in ways that work for them.
The people behind Essential Space
Essential Space is made up of a diverse community of self employed qualified counsellors, counsellors in training, clinical supervisors, creative mentors, group facilitators, volunteers and support team members. Our team brings together a wide range of professional knowledge, therapeutic approaches and lived experience.
We particularly value relational, trauma-informed, creative, neuro-affirming and inclusive practice. Our practitioners are supported through appropriate clinical supervision, safeguarding processes and professional standards so that the people accessing our services remain at the centre of our work.
We don't believe that one approach works for everyone.
For some people, talking is important. Others may communicate and process their experiences through creativity, play, movement, visual approaches or simply having the time and space to build a trusting relationship.
Our role is not to expect someone to fit into our service. Wherever possible, we aim to meet people where they are and work collaboratively to find the support that feels right for them. And our team wouldn't be complete without Lulu, our therapy dog, who offers another gentle way for some of the people we support to connect, regulate and feel comfortable within the therapeutic environment.
A community that has grown with us
Over the past seven years, Essential Space has grown into much more than we could have imagined when we first opened our doors.
What has remained consistent is our commitment to connection, affordability, inclusion, respect and accessible therapeutic support.
Our services have developed by listening to the people who use them, the practitioners who deliver them and the wider communities around us. We want to continue listening, learning and adapting rather than becoming a service that assumes it already knows what people need.
Our next chapter – becoming a charity
2026 marks an important next chapter for Essential Space.
After seven years of developing our not-for-profit work, we have applied to become a registered charity. Our hope is that charitable status will give Essential Space a strong and sustainable foundation from which to continue developing accessible mental health, wellbeing and therapeutic services for many years to come.
Essential Space is continuing as usual while we
await charity registration
Essential Space is currently awaiting confirmation of our application to become a registered charity under our new full name: Essential Space, Centre for Inclusive Wellbeing
While we wait for our charity registration to be completed, our services continue as normal. We remain committed to providing the charitable, not-for-profit services that have been at the heart of Essential Space for the past seven years. For our clients, nothing changes about how you access our support. We will continue to respond to referrals and provide low-cost counselling, mentoring, creative and therapeutic support, groups and community-based services in the same compassionate and inclusive way.
Our move towards becoming a registered charity is about strengthening and securing Essential Space's future. Our work has previously been delivered through Essential Space CIC, which is due to close following the successful completion of our charity registration, and our Essential Space Counselling and Training Ltd, which has supported the development of our therapeutic support and training work. As part of this next chapter, our intention is to bring our charitable services and therapeutic training together within one organisation. This will allow us to operate with a clearer structure and shared purpose as Essential Space, Centre for Inclusive Wellbeing.
Becoming a registered charity will formally recognise the not-for-profit, public-benefit work that has shaped Essential Space since 2019. It will also help us strengthen our governance, develop sustainable services and build solid foundations for the future.
For us, sustainability matters because we want Essential Space to be here for a long time. Everything we have built has been shaped with the people accessing our services in mind. Our priority remains providing safe, ethical, inclusive and accessible mental health support, counselling and therapeutic services across Gloucestershire and, through our online services, to people throughout the UK.
Our structure may be changing, but the heart of Essential Space is not.
We remain committed to listening, learning and growing while keeping the person accessing our support at the centre of what we do. We hope this next chapter will enable Essential Space to continue to thrive, reach more people and provide high-quality, affordable mental health and therapeutic support for many years to come.