Jenny Walters was 14 when she ran away from home. She lived on the streets for two years until she was 16 when she was referred to homelessness organisation Centrepoint.

"It gave her the most safety she had had for two years. It's just a shame she had to wait that long," says Rebecca Pritchard, Centrepoint's director of services.

Other than family and friends, accommodation options for runaways younger than 16 are limited to those provided by local authorities, for example emergency foster care, or those run by voluntary organisations, such as overnight accommodation with the consent of parents or carers, or a refuge. At 16 they become eligible for emergency hostels, shelters and short-term accommodation.

This limits the role organisations such as Centrepoint can play in offering accommodation and support to under-16s. Last year, one in five young people who came into contact with Centrepoint had a history of running away. Some were persistent runaways known to street outreach teams, social services and the police, yet they could not use the services offered by Centrepoint until they were 16.

"Services should reflect needs rather than age," says Pritchard. Otherwise, the danger is that they will make their own arrangements which can put them at risk of exploitation or on the streets. With the British Transport Police at London's King's Cross estimating that it only takes about six hours for newly homeless young people to be approached by pimps or drug dealers, the dangers are clear.

This is where refuges come into their own. Under the Children Act 1989 designated refuges can provide emergency accommodation for under-16s without parental consent if they appear to be at risk of harm. They can stay for up to 14 days continuously, but for no more than 21 days over three months. There were five refuges in England but funding problems have left just one - in London. Even this temporarily shut three years ago because it was losing money, but reopened after a series of crisis talks between the Greater London Association of Directors of Social Services (Gladss), Westminster Council and others. St Christopher's, a voluntary organisation which provides care and supported housing for young people, now runs the refuge with the NSPCC.

The refuge received three years' secure funding, with Gladss agreeing to allocate some of its Quality Protects grant towards running costs. But this year that contribution has been reduced as social services directors have started to question why they should pay for children from other parts of the country, says Ron Giddens, director of children's services at St Christopher's. As yet, there is no funding agreement from next April.

The annual cost of running the refuge is about £660,000 and Giddens cannot see how it could be run more cheaply.

Refuges should be part of a range of services, he says. "The Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) report¹ emphasises preventive work and no one would argue against it, but that doesn't negate the necessity of a refuge. You are not going to stop all young people running away. And a lot of them aren't accessing services and are in danger."

The figures speak for themselves. In its first year of running the refuge St Christopher's had 122 admissions. Last year that number rose to 205 and in the first six months of this year there were 134. About one-third have used the refuge before and returned home but ran away again because the problems there had not been resolved. Up to 80 per cent come from London, but others come from as far away as Jersey. The refuge has received funding from the Children and Young People's Unit to develop a family mediation and support service to try to reduce the numbers of repeated runs.

Meanwhile, the Scottish executive is giving £600,000 to Aberlour Child Care Trust to set up a refuge in Glasgow and build on its Running-Other Choices project.

The problem is that responsibilities for runaways who are under-16 are not clear. Testament to the issue's lack of priority is the fact that Children's Society research from 1999 remains the most up-to-date national information.² It estimated that 77,000 under-16s run away each year. About a quarter of these are younger than 11. The SEU took up the cause a couple of years later and its report cited family problems as the most common reason for a child leaving home. It found that children felt they had no one to talk to about their problems, they did not know what else they could do and they had no support. In short, services did not provide a strong enough safety net.

Nearly half of young people in care have run away at some point in their lives. Although they make up only a small proportion of runaways, children in care are more likely to have run away than those living with families and are more likely to leave repeatedly.

The SEU advocates more preventive work, arguing that problems encountered by adults may not have developed if they had received help as a child. For example nearly half of sentenced prisoners report having run away as children.

Alison Harvey, principal policy and practice manager at the Children's Society, says: "It is useful to think of runaways as an index of the fact that services for children aren't working."

And preventive work is the first element. She says: "It wouldn't necessarily be about runaways generally, it would be about making sure that young people and families are properly supported so they had somewhere to go when they had problems. Work to tackle things such as bullying and abuse can all be reframed as work to prevent them running away.

"The ones we fail to reach with preventive work will run off. You need a network of services so that if they are gone everyone can share their knowledge so that people know who they should notify and what is each person's responsibility."

Local authorities can be reluctant to accommodate runaways because they might think their intervention is not necessary, and that it could involve longer-term responsibility. "Many young people are often not known to social services at the point they run away, and in an environment of constrained resources a young person who has fallen out with their parents may not seem like an immediate concern," says Pritchard.

But local authorities have a duty to plan services for children in need, and government guidance on this refers to runaways. Despite this, the SEU notes "it is clear that most have not taken measures to plan services specifically for runaways". Indeed, only one out of 23 local authorities considered the needs of runaways as a specific group within their children's services plans.

Additionally, they have to report each year on children missing from their agreed placement for one night or more. But according to the SEU, many do not have a clear picture of the numbers and patterns of looked-after children going missing in their area. And they have no responsibility to follow up children who have run away from home.

Stemming from the SEU report are government plans to develop family-based emergency accommodation options, as well as flexible refuges where trained staff can check into accommodation with a runaway and turn it into a temporary refuge. But until more is done, children such as Jenny will continue to put themselves in dangerous situations rather than go home.

Names of children mentioned in this article have been changed.

¹ SEU, Young Runaways, 2002

² Children's Society, Still Running, 1999

Plight of the runaways

Runaways are:

• Five times more likely than their peers to have drug problems.
• Three times more likely to be in trouble with the police.
• Three times more likely to play truant.
• Seven times more likely to have been physically abused.

And:

• One quarter will sleep in unsafe places.
• About 5,000 a year survive through stealing, begging, drug dealing and prostitution.

‘Safe in the city rescued me’

"I never knew my dad, but my mum always had boyfriends," says Sarah Wilson. "They and my mum used to hit me. Sometimes my mum would threaten to send me to a children’s home because she thought I was the reason why her boyfriends left her.

"Then she got her boyfriend who she’s still with. He didn’t hit me but the things he said really hurt and made me feel worthless. It didn’t help that I was being bullied at school. I had been self-harming since I was nine. I tried to commit suicide but didn’t take enough pills.

"I moved to another school when I was 12 but it wasn’t long before I was being bullied there too. When I was 15 I started going to a drama class and met a more alternative crowd of people and for the first time I had friends. But my mum didn’t like my friends’ pierced noses and gothic clothes and when the drama teacher rang her to say I’d missed a class to go to a nightclub she screamed that she would make my life ‘a fucking misery’.

"I ran upstairs, packed a few clothes and ran out. I rang a friend from a telephone box and her mum picked me up. The hostels wouldn’t take me in because I was under 16 and the police just said they’d take me home. I went to stay with a relative, but had to go home. I remember walking out of school in the middle of the afternoon on to the streets. I knew I couldn’t go home and I had nowhere to go.

"I wasn’t on the streets long because I was given information about Safe in the City, a project run in Manchester by the Children’s Society which helps children who have run away and tries to find them services and support.

"I arranged to meet one of the project workers in town and he brought clean clothes, soap, toothpaste and food. I was grateful for that, but more than that I was so relieved to speak to someone who believed me. The project workers gave me advice on what services I could get, came along to these intimidating meetings with social services and spoke on my behalf.

"I ended up going to a children’s home so I could finish my GCSEs. After my exams, Safe in the City helped me to find sheltered accommodation where I would be safe while I looked for work. I’ve got my own flat now and I’m still struggling with depression, but I’m going to university. Safe in the City helped me change my life."