Unless you have a child with special needs or a disability, you might not have heard of Bradford Toy Library. To the families of many of those children, though, it is a very important facility - a library which lends out specialist toys which can stimulate and educate their youngsters.

It is also responsible for another significant service: a book library packed with useful advice and information on a range of groups which can provide a vital support network. So as well as providing the sort of toys many individual families could not afford, it offers a supportive environment.

Every community could do with the equivalent of a Bradford Toy Library. Yet this important unit, which has been gallantly run on a shoestring by two mothers since the Council pulled out five years ago, is itself now under threat. Unless it can raise more funds it will be forced to close its doors to more than 1,000 clients by next March.

It is too important a lifeline to be allowed to disappear, which is why we at the Telegraph & Argus have decided to ask you, our ever-generous readers, to come to its rescue. We are hoping to raise at least £12,000 - not a huge sum but enough to keep the library functioning for another year during which the joint organisers can seek longer-term funding to enable them to continue their vital work. If we can gallop past that target, so much the better.

This shouldn't be a daunting challenge to people who raised more than a million for the MRI scanner and have so willingly backed many other major appeals. Go to it once again, please, for the sake of the children and their families.