“I think it is bad that one agency is trying to blame other agencies or 'society' and I think it is unfortunate this comment was made by the cabinet member for children's services. In reality I feel sympathy for everyone involved. Naturally for Simone, I hope she rests in peace, it sounds like no one really got a grip on how much at risk she was. Regarding the agencies I feel the big problem is serious case reviews have the benefit of 100% hindsight. However agencies (all of them) involved at the sharp end do not have this at the time. They are confronted with an increasingly intractable group of service users, resources problems and pressure from local and central government, increased 'box ticking' to meet government performance indicators and a blame culture against them when something goes wrong. The situation on the ground is they might be confronted with 10 or 20 potential high risk situations and the need to choose which to help as they do not have the resources to meet all their needs fully. This is a dreadfully sad situation but it might not be anyone's 'fault.'”

“What a daft idea to blame Society. The blame clearly lies with the supervision system, which clearly didn't work, and the sick men who exploited her.”

“Nick113, I accept that 'blaming society' is too vague and a bit of a cop-out. However, I don't think the answer is more and more rule-tightening because, as the net becomes bigger, some small fish will always find a way to slip through it. It's true that, beyond tightening the rules governing social workers, etc., it's hard to know where to start or what to do, but I do believe that, for the good of people like Simone, we need to attract higher-calibre people to social work and allow them to work with a degree of flexibility and feeling within a framework that isn't ruled by political correctness, fear of media storms, etc.

Re the 'men' who clearly exploited this poor girl: alas, there seems to be no shortage of lowlifes like this in our society, who lead otherwise respectable lives while preying on the vulnerable. The word despicable springs to mind although it scarcely does the situation justice. I wish the law could be changed so that such immoral individuals can be prosecuted and given hefty sentences.

I don't accept any justification for older men having sexual relationships with school-age girls, apart from in truly exceptional circumstances, such as maybe if they were stuck on a desert island with them. The book should be thrown at them wherever possible!!”

“Two things need to be done. Put the same level of monitoring of web access on home school computers as there would be for an employee working for a large organisation.

Make sure that more robust infrastructure is put up on some of the suicide blackspots to prevent terrible things like this happening/”

“@ArrowOfTruth: "Society" and the Social Services "system" are not the same thing. The management and rules of engagement of the Social Services can be change if government wish to do so. To blame "Society" is to wash one's hands of the problem, because no-one could say where to start or what to do.

I am surprised you don't mention the middle aged men who apparently "dated" this young girl. Were they part of the problem or part of the solution? Not hard to answer that one, is it?”

“Until individuals like Simone are treated by the staff that work for these agencies as people, not as problems, tragedies like this will happen. However, media storms such as that which surrounded the Baby P case and now cases like this one at local level only serve to worsen the climate of fear of making a mistake and the predominance of box-ticking within social services departments that prevent a new culture of caring from emerging. So the staff and their 'cases' are both trapped in a vicious circle.
In these situations, the media always seems to call for more 'box-ticking' to somehow 'ensure that 'it can't happen again'. What they fail to take into account is that humanity and caring is being regulated to death. Until the system changes, a high calibre of compassionate individuals is not going to be attracted to or retained by the social work profession.
Last week's drama 'Public Enemies' on BBC1 highlighted this conflict very well. It dealt with the relationship between a probation officer and a released prisoner. The PO's attempts to apply the rules strictly (and therefore ignore her instinct) created new problems and nearly had disastrous results and ruined lives. The story had a happy ending… but what a shame for the likes of poor Simone that real life often doesn't come up with neat happy endings like that.

So the councillor is in fact right: society and 'the system' need to change.”

“Daft idea, blame shifting and a total responsibility failure by the services involved. Large amounts of money to keep a kid at home with mentally ill parents wee spent where it is obvious that residential care was needed. A sad reflection on the way do-gooders in the social services have put political correctness above common sense!”

“So Mr Burden thinks that it is "Society's" fault that this unfortunate young person died, not any of the six agencies paid to address such cases. Perhaps none of those agencies was at fault, but to pass the blame on to the rest of us doesn't seem very fair. I would have thought that the middle-aged men she encountered might have something to answer for.”