CHILDREN with Downs Syndrome are being denied direct speech and language therapy in Redbridge, an angry mother has claimed.

Evette Saffron from Woodford Green, whose six-year-old daughter Francesca has Downs Syndrome, has criticised the local education authority's practice of leaving mainstream schools to administer learning programmes once the Downs children have been assessed.

Instead, she believes the LEA should provide regular sessions with trained speech and language professionals.

Mrs Saffron, of Worcester Crescent, said: "Children with Downs Syndrome are being told that they do not require direct speech and language therapy.

"A speech therapist puts a programme together for the school to follow. It is given to the child in school by an unqualified child support assistant. No parent wants that for their child."

Francesca, a pupils at Wells Primary, only receives direct sessions with therapists each week because her parents took the LEA to a tribunal two years ago and won. They will return to the tribunal next year to extend the treatment.

Francesca's grandfather Alan Langer said: "Children with Downs Syndrome should learn to speak. When you get through to them they are so loving. But if they cannot speak, they cannot communicate. Then they get frustrated and that leads to problems."

Mrs Saffron started her own group sessions with specialist therapists three years ago. Now 18 children attend the group at Barnardos once a week, at a cost to their parents.

She said: "I don't see why the council cannot provide that kind of service. If children cannot communicate they become socially isolated."

The LEA provides direct speech and language sessions to children with expressive learning difficulties at the Churchfields language unit in South Woodford.

But children with Downs Syndrome are not accepted at the unit because their difficulties are concerned with the brain's receptive inabilities as well as expressive problems.

Mrs Saffron said: "My child is not allowed to go there because her problems are more complex. There is no quick fix for children with Down Syndrome, so there is no unit for them. That is discrimination."

The LEA say that Redbridge Primary Care Trust (PCT) is responsible for assessing childrens' need for speech and language therapy.

A council spokeswoman said: "Where the recommendation from health is for a supervised programme, the LEA supports this in school by the use of specialist teachers."

A Redbridge PCT spokesman said: "The LEA responds to the educational elements of the assessment, and the primary care trust to the health aspects."