EVERY parent’s worst nightmare is a phone call to say their child has been hit by a car.

The panic, the dread, the frantic need to be beside your baby as soon as possible – it is a situation no-one wants to go through but if the worse should happen, all families want and deserve the best possible care available.

For Dawn Morgan, with teenage daughter Hannah left bleeding and dazed in her arms at the roadside, the hour-and-a-half wait for an ambulance made the most worrying of experiences all the more traumatic.

And the realisation of what could have happened, if Hannah had indeed suffered a serious head injury, is only just hitting home. Her family want to know why it took so long for an ambulance to arrive at the scene and they deserve an answer.

We are always being told don’t phone 999 unless it is an emergency. So if more and more people are using minor injury units, local GP services and calling non-emergency numbers, where are all the ambulances? Maybe the public is not heeding advice and continues to abuse the 999 system, maybe the ambulance service is short staffed or maybe it is just not meeting its targets.

Whatever the reason it is not good enough and the South West ambulance service should be counting its lucky stars it is not responsible for a more serious injury this time.