More than 1,300 mentally ill children are being treated on adult psychiatric wards, according to new figures obtained by The Times from a government watchdog.

Almost one in five children in psychiatric intensive care units were found with some of the country’s most disturbed and dangerous mental health patients.

The findings alarmed mental health charities, who said that they had received reports of young people witnessing and experiencing physical, sexual and verbal assault.

The Mental Health Act Commission, which oversees psychiatric treatment in Britain, disclosed that more than 1,300 under18s were placed on adult wards between April 2003 and October 2006.

Just over half of these admissions to adult facilities were 17-year-olds, with most of the remainder being 15 or 16. Twenty-two 14-year-olds, three 13-year-olds and two children under the age of 12 were recorded. One child was aged 10.

Campaigners say that the problem is much wider because only those children detained under the Mental Health Act are recorded. The Government has no statistics for the numbers of children who voluntarily undergo treatment.

Lord Patel of Bradford, chair of the commission, called on the Government to take urgent action.

He said that adult wards were “fairly dysfunctional places on their own term [and] they are unlikely to be suitable places for vulnerable children.”

Lord Patel, a professor at the University of Central Lancashire and chair of the commission since 2002, told the House of Lords that the care packages offered to children and minors were often inadequate, despite the best intentions of staff. “If I was a parent of one of these children, I would be expecting not only this House, but the Government to take immediate and urgent action,” he said.

The commission’s figures showed that 75 per cent of girls under 18 were held on mixed wards, which Lord Patel said was “completely unacceptable.”

They found that only one third of the children had a responsible medical officer who specialised in child and adolescent psychiatry, while one in ten did not have an identified primary nurse.

Three quarters of those wards with children told the commission that they had no plans to move them in the next seven days.

The charity YoungMinds said that many teenagers were denied access to families and education, leading them to reject mental health services.

The situation is worse in the North, according to YoungMinds. London has almost three times as many beds as York and Humber. In Lancashire and Cumbria 90 under18s were in adult wards.

Ivan Lewis, the Care Services Minister, said that the Government wanted to phase out the practice within two years. He said that £32 million was being invested this year to improve the wards and clinics.

This comes as Parliament prepares to debate the Mental Health Bill on April 16.

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