Chamber and committees

Local authorities arerequired by section 1 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 to develop a homelessness strategy fortheir area. Scottish Executive guidance makes clear that the particular needs of homelesschildren and young people should be taken into account and addressed in thesestrategies. The guidance emphasises that where local assessment indicates thatyouth homelessness is a significant issue, the homelessness strategy shouldspecifically identify this as an area for action and the local authority shouldconsider a specific strategy to prevent and address homelessness amongst youngpeople.

Local authorities must workcorporately, and in partnership with other local agencies, to ensure that therange of needs which a young homeless person may have is met.

Homelessness strategies havebeen assessed by a cross-sector panel and feedback given. Implementation of thestrategies will be reviewed by the Executive and also monitored by CommunitiesScotland as part of their inspection of local authorities’ housing andhomelessness functions.

Ministers have taskedScottish Water with delivering the current capital programme (Quality andStandards II) to quality and legislative standards as specified by theappropriate regulator and to overall efficiency targets as set by the WaterIndustry Commissioner.

The delivery of ScottishWater’s capital programme is a matter on which ministers place the highestpriority. It is one of the principle achievements for which the board ofScottish Water will be held accountable. At my last meeting with Scottish Waterwhen this issue was discussed, I received assurance that current investmentcommitments would be delivered to the timescales agreed with the relevantregulator.

Children’s Hearings havewide ranging powers to make whatever disposals they consider appropriate tomeet the individual needs of the child. If service providers such as local authorities and voluntary agenciescan make an appropriate disposal available, the hearing may consider it as acondition of the supervision requirement.

Measuresproposed in the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill will further extend the range of disposals,e.g. the power to impose electronic monitoring on young people as one elementof a package of support measures. The Scottish Executive has increased funding tosupport the Children’s Hearings system and improve service delivery.

Later this year we will lookconstructively and critically at how the system is operating, where and how itmight be made more effective in addressing the needs of children, young peopleand their families.

Localauthorities and managers of serviceshave responsibilities to monitor and improve their performance. Overall, the Scottish Executive undertakes monitoring through the Social Work Services Inspectorate annualreport and periodic thematic and specific reports by the Inspectorate. TheChildren and Young People Delivery Group is taking forward work to strengthenlocal quality assurance systems and external inspection of children’s services.Revised guidance for local authorities onplanning co-ordinated children’s services will be issued later this year. The Scottish Executive has collated and published performance by local authorities and other service providers under the time intervalsmonitoring group. Audit Scotland reports to the Scottish Parliament provide independentassessment of performance.

At individual case level,children’s hearings will monitor progress at review hearings. The AntisocialBehaviour etc. (Scotland) Bill proposes a new power for reporters and hearingsto refer local authorities to thecourts if there are concerns that statutory obligations are not being met.

The Executive’s Reviewof the Children’s Hearings System will explore how children’s hearings'decisions and the outcomes of those decisions can be more consistently recordedand monitored to improve the service for children.

The Scottish Executive has significantly increased resources to the Scottish Children’sReporter Administration in recent years to ensure that referrals areappropriately investigated.

A number ofpolicies and programmes provide support for parenting either directly orindirectly. These include Integrated Community Schools and Sure Start Scotland,which targets support at families with very young children (0-3 years),particularly vulnerable and deprived families. Further parenting support services are to be made available throughout Scotland aspart of our antisocial behaviour measures.

Castle Tioram is a scheduledmonument and as such responsibility for its maintenance rests with its owners.At the public local inquiry held in 2001 into an application for scheduledmonument consent for the restoration of the Castle, Historic Scotland argued thecase for consolidation. Scottish ministers subsequently refused scheduledmonument consent for the application.

Any future application forscheduled monument consent in respect of the Castle would be considered on itsmerits and in line with Scottish Executive policy.

Responsibility for the maintenance of individual historic buildings and monuments rests with their owners. Historic Scotland is directly responsible for the maintenance of over 300 properties in the care of Scottish ministers and one of the agency’s keytargets in recent years has been the completion of condition surveys on all these properties in order to prioritise more effectively its programme ofmaintenance.

The first stage of theExecutive’s review of the Children’s Hearings System will involve wide and opendiscussions on the hearings system, its principles and its objectives. Laterthis year we will look constructively and critically at how the system isoperating, where and how it might be made more effective in addressing theneeds of children, young people and their families, including how volunteersmight be supported.

The 2002 study into children on home supervision Children (Scotland) Act 1995 Research Findings No. 4: Home Supervision was conducted by Stirling University on behalf of the Scottish Executive Education Department.

The Audit Scotland report Dealing with offending by young people (December 2002) was carried out on behalf of the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission. Dealing with offending by young people: A follow up report was published in November 2003.

The Act contains a range ofdifferent provisions which are at varying stages of implementation and monitoringto ensure that they are achieving what was anticipated when it was enacted.