A WOMAN in a drug induced daze attacked two children because they would not help her find her baby's bottle.

Blackburn magistrates heard that a six-year-old girl had been slapped with the back of the hand, scratched across the face and grabbed by the throat. She was also grabbed by the hair and her head banged against the wall.

Her 10-year-old sister was slapped repeatedly across the face before she was butted on the nose and kicked on the leg.

The court was told the children were found in a bedroom in a state of distress while Nicola Laing was asleep on the sofa in the same house, clearly under the influence of drugs or drink or both.

When interviewed Laing, 27, claimed some drugs she had taken had been spiked. She told police she had a £50-a-day drugs habit and at the time of the incident had taken amphetamines, cannabis and ecstasy.

Laing, of Fowler Height Close, Blackburn, pleaded guilty to two charges of assault causing actual bodily harm.

She was made subject to a community rehabilitation order with a condition that she attends the Addressing Substance Related Offending programme.

Daniel King, defending, said his client was "horrified and appalled" that she had let herself get into the condition where the attacks took place.

He told how Laing had become a single parent when she was just 17-years-old. When she was pregnant with her second child she was assaulted by her partner and she had retaliated. That had resulted in her being convicted of wounding and causing a poison to be taken so as to cause grievous bodily harm.

She then met a Blackburn man in her native Newcastle and came back to East Lancashire with him.

"He is now serving a prison sentence for causing death by dangerous driving and it is fair to say she has not had an easy life," said Mr King. "On this occasion she had descended to the depths behind a fog of drink and drugs to hide from her problems."