SOCIAL Service bosses have said there are key lessons to be learned after a mother was jailed for four years for killing her young daughter by feeding her methadone.

Taj Begum Ali, 25, was sent to prison after admitting poisoning her daughter Natalia Mujahid, three, with the heroin substitute. She had administered the liquid drug in a bid to keep her daughter quiet.

Her husband, heroin addict Asad Mujahid, 28, was jailed for two and a half years after pleading guilty to two charges of cruelty to a child.

Mujahid was unemployed, but had worked as an embroiderer for a textile firm. The court heard he had been hoping to join the police in Pakistan before he came to England.

Blackburn with Darwen's assistant director of social services Steve Schloss, said: "The key lesson to be learned in these circumstances is that families using appropriately prescribed methadone need to be aware of the dangers in the same way you would not leave Domestos lying around which young children could get hold of."

Both parents were jailed at Preston Crown Coury yesterday, where it was heard that bottles of methadone were left strewn around their house in Notre Dame Gardens, Blackburn. Mujahid had been prescribed the drug in a bid to beat his heroin addiction.

Paramedics were called to the house in April last year where a crew found Asad Mujahid frantically trying to resuscitate his daughter by giving her heart and lung massage.

The little girl had been given methadone by Taj Ali when she had difficulty getting to sleep.

Natalia was rushed to Blackburn Infirmary and then to the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, where she died.

Neither Ali nor Mujahid told paramedics or hospital staff that their daughter had swallowed methadone, which might have allowed them to save her.

A spokesman for East Lancashire Health Authority, Judith Roberts, said: "Our advice is that all medicines should be kept out of children's reach and preferably locked away, although this situation is slightly different as the drugs were administered.

"Anything that night cause a problem for children, should be kept well out of the way."