HEALTH bosses want to close 12 beds for mental health patients in Laindon and treat them at home instead.

South Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust, which is responsible for managing mental health services, plans to close the Weymarks specialist care centre.

The trust needs to save £7.6million this year as the NHS spending cuts begin to bite.

But health chiefs say the move to treat more mental health patients at home would have happened even if Whitehall had not cut its annual budget.

Andrew Pike, chief executive of NHS South East Essex and NHS South West Essex, said: “This is the path we were headed towards.

“While the savings have to be made, I would not want anyone to think that is the sole motivation behind this.

“We believe this will result in better care for patients.”

At the moment, there are 36 patients in long-term rehabilitation programmes at centres such as Weymarks.

If the trust’s plans get the go-ahead, most of them will be either sent back to their own homes or moved to residential care homes.

Weymarks and Brentwood’s Firs Periphery House, Green-woods, Lyndhurst and Bramleys will all close, with only the ten-bed Churchview centre in Laindon remaining open.

The patients will then receive regular visits from the trust’s community rehabilition team, which will grow from six employees to 21, to help them readjust to public life.

Mark Tebbs, NHS South West Essex commissioner, said the vast majority of the patients had been in a stable condition for some time.

He said: “None of them could be considered a danger to the public.”

The trust is now undertaking a consultation with patients and families before it makes its final decision.

Dr Patrick Geoghegan, the trust’s chief executive, said: “Patient care is still at the heart of everything we do.

“Patients who currently reside in the rehabilitation beds have been assessed, or are in the process of being assessed, under the continuing care criteria by social workers in the trust and Essex County Council.

“Patients will be found care packages based on their own individual clinical needs, which must come first.”