An Ealing campaign group have presented a petition attempting to get Ealing's NHS bosses to reinstate beds for children and adults in a mental health crisis. 

Ealing Save Our NHS have got 1000 physical signatures on their petition and produced a document in opposition to the proposed closure of the Hope and Horizon Wards on the St. Bernard's site at Ealing Hospital. 

The closure of this would see Ealing without any mental health beds for anyone under the age of 65, with the nearest ones now being in Hounslow. 

Eve Turner, Secretary of Ealing Save Our NHS said: "Hope and Horizon wards are the last two acute mental health wards in Ealing which can take for adults under 65.  

"Closing them would be a loss of vital beds that the area can ill afford and it means adults in crisis being sent out of the borough away from their support networks. Children in severe crisis are already sent out of Ealing. 

"Ealing Save Our NHS regularly holds campaign stalls around the Borough and we have found huge concern over the shortage of mental health services.  

"A thousand people have physically signed this petition, which we hope will focus the minds of the authorities. Suitable beds need to be re-opened urgently." 

In the document, Ealing Save Our NHS found out via a freedom of information request that 352 people in Ealing were admitted to acute mental health wards in Hammersmith and Hounslow during 2021 

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Eve Turner said in the document: "It would be a huge retrograde step to lose 31 much-needed beds for our communities and 14 beds as a whole for Ealing Hammersmith & Hounslow.  

"Mental Health provision is clearly in crisis – alongside other essential NHS services. The Trust has provided no convincing evidence that these beds are not needed – all the indications are the reverse.  

"Nor are there concrete proposals for replacement acute services in the community – even supposing that was possible for seriously ill patients.  

"Pressure on services continues to mount up, the local population continues to rise and experts in the field believe that the rise in serious mental ill health among young people will impact on adult services in the future."