THERE can be few parents who haven't thought anxiously how they would ever have managed to cope if their children were disabled.

But for a significant number of people, such worries are an everyday reality.

Degrees of physical and mental disability can vary widely and the needs of individual children differ accordingly.

But many will need professional support of some kind because dedicated family and friends alone cannot provide a complex 365 day-a-year service.

And they should never be expected to.

But in social services and health departments where there are endless demands on tight financial budgets, disabled children and their families don't receive the priority they should - if the case of the Eva Heeks and her parents is typical.

Eva's father Ray Heeks chronicles a series of failures in a system which "often let her, and us down."

Some problems are financial perhaps because ministers promise things without providing the necessary cash. Others appear to be caused by the lack of a co-ordinated approach by health trusts, the NHS and local authorities.

Now he hopes to raise the profile of disabled children and the lack of care available. It is too late for his family to benefit but many others in Blackburn and around the country richly deserve a better deal.