Parents of children with learning disabilities have begun a fightback against proposed cuts to their services.

They are disgusted at any possibility of reductions in the amount of council care received by their children.

The parents are particularly angry at suggestions that their children may suffer so council cash can be diverted to the crisis-hit education service.

About 20 parents and carers attended the campaign launch organised by the charity Mencap.

One mother said that council tax payers would not agree to empty their own bins to bail out the education service, so it was wrong to expect disabled people to go without.

People at the meeting vowed to fight any reduction in services for the children.

They are to contact MPs and councillors, voicing their fears about the effects of budget cuts.

Paul Smithson, district officer for Mencap, said: "We have been told by officers that the learning disability budget is £267,000 overspent this year. We have also been told that they have to make savings of £350,000 within the service plan for next year.

"The worst-case scenario, we are told, is that they have to trim £617,000 off the service."

Social services bosses originally considered asking the disabled people to pay for their own transport to day centres, or hiking the already-controversial day-care charges by ten per cent, but dropped the idea after protests to MPs.

Now they are looking at other ways of saving money by bringing in stricter criteria for who can attend day centres and redirecting some existing clients to drop-in centres or further education courses.

There will also be efforts to shift some of the care costs on to the National Health Service.

The meeting heard that Bradford spends ten per cent of its total social services budget on looking after people with learning disabilities - below the UK average of 12 per cent.

Helen Todd, whose daughter Kathy attends The Grove day-care facility five days a week, said she would be concerned if day care was replaced with further-education courses.

She said further education was organised into terms with long breaks. The gap meant people like Kathy lost ground and had to re-learn material after the break.

"The problem is you lose the continuity," she said.

Parents plan to attend a consultation meeting with social services officers, set to take place at Shipley Resource Centre on January 27.

e-mail: sarah.walsh

@bradford.newsquest.co.uk