Editorial: Where is the joined-up ownership of policy?

It couldn't have come at a worse time for anyone involved with the strategy.

It provides more ammunition for its opponents in an increasingly polarised fight, and is likely to further undermine young people's willingness to approach adults who are there to help them in times of crisis.

It could also prove damaging to the wider reforms of children's services. It has starkly pointed out a number of contradictions and shortcomings.

On the one hand, the press has called for more joined-up working; on the other, it has declared that the Government's efforts have again been shown not to work.

The "inexperienced, 21-year-old school health worker", as one paper described the outreach worker who correctly referred Melissa to doctors, is part of a new era of multi-disciplinary, multi-agency, co-located working that epitomises the vision of the Every Child Matters green paper and the Children Bill. How demoralising then, to see the buck passed in such a spectacular fashion once the story hit the papers. Those making enquiries were passed from school to education authority to primary care trust to department of health, to DfES and back to the school, with no one prepared to take responsibility even for their bit of the jigsaw.