THE parents of a baby left in a plaster cast covering half her body say they have been refused financial help with her care.
Gill and Neil Gorman, from Poplars Avenue, Orford, have applied for disability living allowance on behalf of their daughter, one-year-old Grace.
Doctors found she had a dislocated hip and ordered that she be put in plaster for eight months.
But documents from the social security and child support department, say the youngster cannot be considered eligible for the benefit until she is three.
Mrs Gorman says her daughter can sit up but is unable to lie back down on her own.
She needs to be washed far more frequently than other youngsters and can get her legs stuck in her cot.
Mrs Gorman says she needs extra care to enable her daughter to lead a normal life.
She made a claim to receive the living allowance on behalf of her daughter in January, when the cast was put on, but has had the original claim and two appeals refused.
In documents received by the couple from the department, it states that Mrs Gorman's original appeal was refused on the grounds that the youngster cannot be considered for help with getting around until she is three-years-old.
It also said that her care requirements are not considered to be 'exceptionally greater than those for any normal child of her age.'
Mrs Gorman says she plans to keep on fighting the claim and is in the process of getting confirmation of her daughter's disability from her doctors at Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool and also a heath visitor.
She said: "We can't understand why she hasn't been given this allowance, for it to be because she is under the age of three seems a silly reason."
A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions said that they were unable to comment on individual cases but confirmed there was an age restriction on some aspects of a allowance claim.
However, they said they would investigate to ensure that their clients were applying for the correct components of benfits which they may be entilited to.
