Safety campaigners have urged Bradford parents planning parties to be aware of the risks balloons pose to young children.

Jane Eason, of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said the case of a Bradford girl who suffered brain damage after swallowing a balloon highlighted the danger.

Today Nadeem and Shahnaz Butt are back home caring for their severely-disabled daughter after accepting a compensation settlement for ten-year-old Sonia.

Balloon importers ITI (UK) paid a £200,000 out-of-Court settlement without admission of liability at Leeds High Court.

Shahnaz said: "That money would not be enough to sort Sonia's life out. We are taking each day as it comes. She's our daughter and the love is still there.

"The people who make those kind of things need to consider and put their own children in front of them and think it could happen to their own child. They have to consider safety. That warning at the back of the packet of balloons does nothing."

Sonia is now blind, cannot speak and has no control over her body. She was starved of oxygen for 20 minutes four years ago, when she was found with a balloon in her throat which had stopping her breathing.

Her parents battled to revive their daughter in the moments after the horrific accident.

Nadeem said: "There isn't public information. You would never think of the danger and now it has happened to us and we know what we are going through and what we have been through."

Miss Eason, of RoSPA, said: "Especially with Christmas, and Eid, coming up, it's important to make sure if you have young children they shouldn't get hold of balloons." Any which were burst should be cleared up immediately, she said.

Paul Cooper, head of safety at West Yorkshire Trading Standards, said warnings on balloons had changed in 1998 to spell out the risk of choking and suffocation and tell parents they should not be given to children under the age of eight.

After Sonia's accident, her parents spent a whole year living in hospital with her, 24 hours a day.

Shahnaz said the couple had bought things to make Sonia's life more pleasant and stimulating, but she would like her daughter to have a sensory room.

Nadeem said caring for Sonia was emotionally and physically draining. Support from some people had drained away after she left hospital and went back to the family's Great Horton home.

He said: "We're feeling relieved it's all over and done with. It was nothing to do with the money, it was to put it across to everybody that balloons are dangerous."