Strengthening Thurrock’s Communities Through Collaboration
Stronger Together Thurrock is a partnership that brings together the voluntary, community, faith, and social enterprise (VCFSE) sector with statutory partners, including the NHS and Thurrock Council.
Many local charities and community organisations face significant challenges—rising costs, increasing service demand, and fierce competition for limited funding. Many groups are operating close to financial collapse. This not only risks shrinking the sector during a time of unprecedented need, but also places a heavy burden on the wellbeing of the sector’s leaders.
The Stronger Together Thurrock Partnership ensures that these leaders are not facing these challenges alone. While there’s no magic money tree, collective action and strategic support can significantly enhance the sector’s resilience. By sharing advice, guidance, resources, data, networking opportunities, and peer support, the sector can thrive—not just survive.
Empowered by the Thames Freeport
Thanks to support from the Thames Freeport Skills Accelerator, Stronger Together Thurrock is expanding its capacity and impact—evolving to meet future challenges head-on and ensuring that local communities fully benefit from Thurrock’s ongoing economic transformation.
This funding has enabled two major initiatives:
Undertaking a Stronger Together Strategic Review
Goal: To identify the conditions necessary for a thriving, resilient, and innovative VCFSE sector in Thurrock.
Approach: A central part of our work has been bringing partners together to explore what it really takes to create the conditions for a thriving, resilient, and innovative sector. Through this shared exploration, partners have begun to identify the conditions for success including factors like funding, leadership, policy and collaboration. Together, we are co-producing a workplan that reflects these insights, with a strong emphasis on building networks and strengthening relationships — particularly between the VCFSE sector and local businesses — to foster collaboration, unlock resources, and support long-term resilience.
Building Sector Resilience through Leadership Support
Goal:Â A resilient sector starts with resilient people. The Community Leadership Network (CLN)Â supports leaders and senior managers in the VCFSE sector by providing well-being resources and professional development opportunities.
Key elements include:
- 1-2-1 person-centred coaching, creating safe spaces to explore well-being and leadership challenges, and develop personalised strategies for sustainable impact.
- A growing digital library of resources for ongoing support.
- Future peer-to-peer support spaces for local leaders to connect, reflect, and grow together.
To date, CLN has delivered 67 client-led coaching sessions, participants demonstrated a range of meaningful outcomes, based on start and end self-ratings against key coaching criteria:
      • Improvements in workplace wellbeing ranging from 70% to 95%
      • 78% of clients showed growth in self-efficacy, resilience, focus, and emotional regulation
Why This Work Matters: Leadership Today Shapes Thurrock’s Tomorrow
The VCFSE sector plays a vital role in Thurrock, often reaching the most vulnerable and underserved communities. By investing in leadership, resilience, and strategic partnerships—especially with initiatives like Thames Freeport— The Stronger Together Thurrock partnership is beginning to explore how the borough’s economic growth can be more inclusive, equitable, and community-focused. While still in its early stages, this emerging model of collaboration offers a promising example of how public, private, and voluntary sectors can work together to support sustainable change.
Invitation to Join Us
To create the changes in Thurrock that Thames Freeport and other organisations such as ourselves, and you, are working to achieve, conversations and collaborations need to happen across sectors, systems and industries.
This blog was written by Mark Tebbs CEO of Thurrock Community and Voluntary Service. If any of our work or approach within Stronger Together or Community Leadership Network resonate with you, and you would like to explore opportunities in any shape or form please contact Mark Tebbs, CEO Thurrock Community and Voluntary Services at: mark.tebbs@thurrockcvs.org Â