A sick toddler who is among 60 people in the UK with a rare blood disease saved his father from jail yesterday.

Bank worker Christopher Atkinson, 22, from Middlesbrough, was unable to cope with the stresses of his three-year-old child's anaemia.

He parted from his lover, then began to steal from his employer, Barclaycard, and from a businessman uncle, said Rod Hunt, defending.

Paul Cleasby, prosecuting, said that Atkinson, a customer inquiries clerk with Barclaycard, used the name of a dead customer to send a new card to his girlfriend's address in August 1999. He used the card to buy goods.

Atkinson's deception was found out, but while on bail last December he stole his uncle's company cheque book. He and friends cashed a number of cheques, Teesside Crown Court heard.

Mr Cleasby said: "Atkinson told police that he was unable to manage on his low income and he supplemented it by stealing."

Recorder Peter Benson told Atkinson: "People in positions of trust who betray that trust are normally sent to custody.

"It seemed to me that your out-of-character behaviour was very much the product of the very tragic domestic circumstances in relation to the health of your own child.

"And so, in these exceptional circumstances, and given the fact that over the long period of something like 16 months since you stopped offending you have got yourself a job and are in a position to make compensation, I see the illness of your child as exceptional circumstances which just allow me to avoid sending you to prison today."

Atkinson, of Hazel Court, Middlesbrough, Teesside, was ordered to do 180 hours community service and to pay £40 a week compensation totalling £1,250 to Barclaycard and £2,750 to Cash Generators.

He pleaded guilty to charges of unauthorised access to a computer with intent, two thefts, obtaining goods by deception and forgery. He also asked for 16 deception offences to be taken into consideration.