St Aubyn Centre

We provide services for young people and their families across England across two sites – the St Aubyn Centre and Rochford Hospital.

The St Aubyn Centre in Colchester was purpose built and opened in 2012. It has two wards: Longview and Larkwood.

Longview is a Generic Adolescent Unit (GAU) that provides assessment and treatment for young people between the age of 13 and their 18th birthday, who are experiencing a range of mental health difficulties.  These include depression, self-harm, psychosis, severe trauma reactions, and emotion dysregulation, with accompanying risks that can no longer be safely managed in the community.

Larkwood is the only NHS Adolescent Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) in the East of England and provides care for young people who are experiencing high risk acute, complex and severe mental health difficulties.

Longview has 15 beds and Larkwood has 10 beds. Both wards are staffed by an experienced multi-disciplinary team (MDT) including nurses, health care assistants, doctors, psychologists and therapists.

Within the centre is a school, the St Aubyn Centre Therapeutic Education Department, which enables young people who are recovering from mental illness to continue their education. This is considered an integral part of their treatment programme. Ofsted has rated the school as outstanding.

Meet the team at St Aubyn Centre

Take a virtual tour of the St Aubyn Centre

If you are coming to the centre, we invite you to take a look inside our centre and explore ahead of your visit.

Patient experience

We would like to hear about your experience on the ward, please give feedback to our ward staff.  It is very important that we hear from you about what has happened during your time with us as this will help us to improve things for other young people in similar circumstances, thank you.

Young people need to be referred by either our crisis team or community mental health team.