PARENTS of children with disabilities in Wiltshire are horrified that a charity providing the help and support they need might have to cut services due to a lack of cash.

The West Wiltshire Portage Service sends trained tutors into the homes of pre-school aged children to work with them and their families to improve quality of life.

It receives funding from Wiltshire County Council for 25 of the 35 children it helps.

The extra £20,000 a year needed comes from trusts and fundraising but tutors and parents say that extra has not been coming and services may have to be scaled down.

Parent Alan Hunt, whose two-year-old daughter Holly benefits from the service, said: "Trusts tend to have their money invested somewhere and they hand out the interest and dividends.

"But because of the stock market's performance this amount has fallen and we have to make up the shortfall."

Sharon Amor's four-year-old daughter Peaches, has been receiving help from the service in since she was a year old. Peaches, who has a six-year-old brother, Harrison, and a sister, Trinity, two, was born perfectly healthy but started to suffer from seizures when she was three months old.

Doctors diagnosed West Syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy that affects children from three months old to a year.

The seizures left Peaches with brain damage. Today she is developmentally not far ahead of a nine-month old child and is not expected to progress beyond the level of a two-year-old.

A tutor from the service visits the family home each week to help her and to teach her family how they can help her and communicate with her.

Mrs Amor said: "If I hadn't had portage I don't know if I could have come to terms with Peaches' condition. I can't explain how difficult that is to do.

"They have taught me how to deal with my child and that is something you need to learn when you have a child who is different."

Anyone who can help with fundraising to keep the service going in west Wiltshire can call (01225) 766500.