TORFAEN cabinet will hold a special meeting to examine the decision to axe a babysitting service for autistic children.

As we reported, the service was cut in October as part of a savings package brought in to limit a social services' projected £2.2 million overspend.

But furious parents told the Argus the service was cut with no warning - and in some cases they only found out from the voluntary helpers themselves.

Torfaen's cabinet approved the package of savings, worth a total of £241,000, on September 16. The sitting service amounts to £6,700 of that total.

Parents were contacted in October by the council and told the service had to end straight away because it was "unlikely to be acceptable in terms of new national standards for domiciliary care in Wales".

But on Wednesday, a special meeting of the social services and health overview and scrutiny committee called for the cabinet review its decision.

Councillor Fred Bacon said: "It's not a cut - it's an amputation."

He called the cost of running the sitting service "piddling" and added, "I know we are in debt but this is so little money."

Torfaen council's monitoring officer Duncan Forbes said the regulating framework and health and safety executive would "frown" on the use of the untrained teenagers who had been involved in the service.

Of the total of 20 families who used the service, the council says four stopped for "alternative reasons" before it ended, and a significant number of the rest are either making their own arrangements or do not wish to discuss the alternatives.

The council maintains that in order to continue the service would have needed considerable investment to bring it up to standard, making it significantly more expensive to run.

Tim Davies, chairman of Gwent Autistic Society, has a nine-year-old son who suffers from autism.

He said: "This proves our point that the decision was not thought through properly in the first place.

"They should have done this initially and got the full facts of the situation out into the open in the beginning.

"We very much appreciate the support that the councillors have given us on this issue."

* A date is yet to be set for the special cabinet meeting.