Report calls for review of the detention of children

And Adam's mother Carol Pounder has backed the report by the Lancashire Safeguarding Children Board and said its recommendations would have saved her son's life.

Adam, of Harold Street, Burnley, was found hanged in Hassockfield Secure Training Centre in August 2004 aged just 14.

He is the youngest person to die in custody in this country. Adam was facing a wounding charge which was about to be dropped.

The Lancashire Safeguarding Children Board has looked into Adam's death in its capacity as an official body which was set up in April 2006 to ensure children and young people in the county are safe and secure.

Its report will be translated into an action plan to improve current practice in Lancashire to ensure lessons are learned from the teenager's death.

Prison Service bosses will also review the report.

The report recommends that: cases of young people in custody are reviewed every three to five days; more local places are available to ensure a young person is held in custody within 50 miles of their home; how and when young people are restrained is clarified; there is easy access to therapy for vulnerable youngsters; custodial sentences for under 16s are only issued in exceptional circumstances.

An inquest into Adam's death earlier this year ruled that Adam had intended to commit suicide.

It also found that staff at Hassockfield had acted appropriately in the hours before Adam's death when they had used a "nose distraction technique" in which upward pressure is placed on the nose to cause a short pain.

But the coroner called for "an urgent and thorough investigation" into the use of restraint techniques in custody.

Adam had written five letters home threatening to kill himself.

On the report, Ms Pounder of Greenock Close, Burnley, said: "A child in a detention centre is vulnerable and they want to use restraint techniques on them. I don't agree with this.

"Adam did not have access to any therapists and all he had was a nurse and she wasn't qualified.

"They should have qualified staff who know what they can and can't do when restraining someone.

"The guidelines in relation to restraint need clarifying because if people do not know how to restrain a child they should not be working there.

"I think if these recommendations had been place Adam would not be dead."

Gill Rigg, chair of Lancashire Safeguarding Children Board, said the review was not to determine who was responsible or the cause of Adam's death but "to establish whether there are lessons to be learned to safeguard children, particularly vulnerable young people who are detained in secure accommodation."