The report said some runaways faced heightened risks

Researchers from the Children's Society studied results at 19 pilot projects providing services for runaways.

Three-quarters of first-time runaways returned home permanently compared with 54% of those who had previously run away.

The charity's policy advisor, Andy McCullough, said the projects showed the benefits of helping runaways early.

"We hope that these will now become a standard part of service provision for children and young people," Mr McCullough said.

The pilot projects studied for the report were funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) in a bid to find effective ways of bringing down the figure of 100,000 children under 16 who run away from home each year.

Researchers concluded many of the projects were successfully providing short-term crisis intervention and preventative services for young runaways.

But they warned there were still some young people who were not getting help and at significant risk of being drawn into sexual exploitation, drug use and crime.

'Integrated services'

Children who were not reported as missing to the police, such as those who were thrown out of home or those who ran away in some Asian communities, faced heightened risks, the report said.

Researchers said there was an urgent need to offer alternative services to reach such youngsters including projects which could be accessed directly without a referral.

Gwyther Rees who led the research team said the study showed such children were "slipping through the support services net".

"We need to find alternative ways of reaching these young people who often fail to recognise the danger they are in," Mr Rees said.

A DfES spokesman said they welcomed the report which recognised the value of the "integrated services" at the heart of the department's Every Child Matters agenda.

"We are making sure that services are based around the needs of the child, that information sharing between professionals is improved and that a named lead professional will be identified for all cases," the spokesman said.