Help Ambers dream of walking come true

Amber Porterfield has a dream that one day she will be able to walk.

And now an entire community is getting behind a mammoth 60,000 fundraising effort to make sure the five-year-olds dream will become a reality.

The five-year-old has spastic diplegic cerebral palsy and uses a walking frame and a wheelchair to get about.

Her family have launched the appeal with the help of Pelsall Village School where she is a Year One pupil, to come up with the cash to cover the costs of a life-changing operation in the United States.

If it proves successful the treatment will help her to walk unaided.

The proceeds will also help the family to go with her to the Cerebral Palsy Centre at the St Louis Childrens Hospital, Missouri, for the selective dorsal rhizotomy (SDR) operation.

She has limited mobility in her lower limbs because the signals from her brain to the spine do not work.

This major procedure on her spine would test the nerves with electrodes to find which is causing the stiffness in her lower limbs. This nerve would then be cut.

Her mother Susannah Kemp, aged 33, explains: Amber was assessed last year to see whether she could have this operation here.

Then in January she had a follow up consultation and we were told that she was suitable for the surgery.

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Help Ambers dream of walking come true