From the moment Ellie was born her mother, Katy McGuinness, was trying to figure out where her daughter would live when she was 25 years old. "That was mad. You don't do that with your other kids," says McGuinness.

Ellie (22 months) has Down Syndrome. She is her parents' fourth child in a family where the eldest is eight. McGuinness's initial reaction to the shock of having a child with a learning disability was to plan ahead. "You overplan in the beginning. I don't look so far ahead now. I'm not as manic about it as I may have been. I take a few months at a time," says McGuinness.

Today, Ellie is in the happy situation of getting early intervention with Deirdre Muldoon, a speech and language therapist who runs a morning group for toddlers with Down Syndrome, autism and other learning disabilities.

Muldoon is convinced that early intervention is the key to giving these children the best chance of going to mainstream school and ultimately becoming independent. Ellie attends a two-hour session three days a week with Muldoon, who currently has places available for other children.

With Muldoon, Ellie has learned Lamh, a form of sign language used by people with mental disabilities. "It's a bridge to speech. When she gets the word, she drops the sign," says Muldoon. By using sign language, children get the idea that a symbol can represent something they want, and that using symbols is the key to communication with others.

Today, Ellie can say four or five words and sign 20 or 30. She's a gorgeous, peaceful child who enjoys the rough and tumble of family life.

Like other parents in her situation, McGuinness has had to pay privately to get the best care for her child. She chose Muldoon's class after educating herself about the condition. A breakthrough was getting information from the Sarah Duffen Foundation and becoming involved in Down Syndrome Ireland (DSI).

When she discovered how impressive the Sarah Duffen Foundation was, McGuinness realised that "what we are getting here is woefully inadequate, especially in terms of speech therapy. Children like Ellie should have intensive speech therapy from birth. Joining in a circle with 20 other kids once a week is not going to do it." Through the service provider in McGuinness's catchment area, Ellie has access to a once-weekly-parent-a-child group, physiotherapy and a "haphazard system of home visits."

McGuinness has no doubt that the service provider is well-meaning; it simply hasn't got the resources to give children like Ellie what they need. So parents are going private.

"According to the Sarah Duffen Foundation, speech therapy is the key to everything. If you can crack the communication problem, all the other things follow." Having to pay £2,500 year for speech therapy, as McGuinness is doing, can be a burden for many families, especially considering that children with Down Syndrome are not automatically entitled to medical cards and are likely to be at the doctor's more often than other children. DSI subsidises private speech therapy for parents who cannot afford it - if the parents can find a speech therapist who isn't too busy to take their child on.

For parents like McGuinness, no effort is too much for these special children. "All the research evidence shows that kids do better in integrated education with peers the same age, and if they are to stand a chance they have to be pushed," she says. For more information on Deirdre Muldoon's early intervention programme, telephone (01) 2894503.