The mother of a boy whose heart stopped three times after he was injured in a car crash has urged other parents to join a new support group.

Sally Hockley, 46, said she would have had a breakdown if the Child Brain Injury Trust had not been on hand to offer information and support for her son, Ashley, 13.

Now she is encouraging other families in a similar position to join the charity's Oxford support group, which is launched on Saturday.

Mrs Hockley, her husband Michael, now 51, son Alex, now 16, and Ashley were involved in a car accident, while on holiday in 1989.

Both boys were left in a coma, and half of Ashley's brain was left useless.

Learning support assistant Mrs Hockley, of Orpwood Way, Abingdon, said Ashley was in a coma for three weeks and "died" three times when his heart stopped and he had to be resuscitated.

"Ashley will never be 100 per cent better, but we hope he will get better with time," she said. "We had awful emotional and physical problems when he was smaller. He had a stroke at the age of two."

No official figures are kept to show how many children have acquired brain injuries, but CBIT believe it may be in the hundreds. It took the Hockley family five years to find CBIT and she fears others may be missing out.

Mrs Hockley said: "Without the support group we wouldn't have got through. The help is unbelievable. With a child suffering from brain injury you feel such loneliness.

"No child is the same when they have acquired brain injury. But if people know about the trust they know someone can give them advice.

"You'd be surprised at the number of people who don't know about it, even though their child has suffered brain injury after an accident."

CBIT will launch its support group, at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, on Saturday, January 26, from 10.30am.