Chamber and committees

This will be taken forward mainly by the new Scottish centre for learning disabilities. We announced in March a grant of £1.5 million to a consortium led by ENABLE to establish the new centre. One of the key elements in its remit is to promote public awareness and understanding about learning disabilities through changing negative attitudes and perceptions. It will work with other organisations to share knowledge and improve information services.We are also funding the national Anti-Bullying Network to help schools across Scotland share good practice in tackling bullying and provide training and consultancy services to support schools and local authorities in developing effective anti-bullying strategies. This will benefit pupils with learning disabilities.The Anti-Bullying Network and the Scottish centre will work together to promote awareness of learning disabilities in schools.

The Same as You?: A review of services for people with learning disabilities recommended that services in the community for people with learning disabilities should be developed to allow the remaining long-stay hospitals to close by 2005. It also recommended that approximately 400 inpatient places should be retained for assessment purposes and for people requiring specialist treatment which cannot be met in the community. It is for health boards, NHS Trusts and social work authorities to work through the implementation of these recommendations locally. The pace of change will therefore be for local determination, subject to the overall aim of achieving the 2005 target.

Local area co-ordinators will be responsible for making sure that each person who wants to has the opportunity to develop a life plan. Guidance issued on 26 March to local authorities and health boards stating that the appointment of local area co-ordinators should be one of the priorities for use of change funds. The same as you? recommends that initial training for putting local area co-ordinators in place should begin in autumn 2001. Change funds of £36 million over three years have been allocated from April 2001 to support these and other proposals.

The Executive has no plans at present to commission formal research into the incidence of people with learning disabilities within the prison population or secure accommodation. The presence of a learning disability is taken into account when planning activities to address offending behaviour in the prison setting.

At 31 March 2000, there were 1,818 people with learning disabilities in long-stay hospitals.

he constitution for the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers formed part of the agreement on teachers' conditions of service (which was endorsed by representatives of all local authorities on 26 January). The constitution states that the Committee will have 22 members appointed annually and drawn from CoSLA, the Scottish Executive and organisations representing teachers. Under the terms of the constitution, representation from local authorities is a matter for CoSLA.

The information requested is not available centrally.

All local authorities will be entitled to be reimbursed by the Scottish Executive to the extent of 75% of the cost of granting relief to businesses suffering hardship as a result of the foot and mouth outbreak.We will meet 95% of the cost of funding such hardship relief for a period of three months for small businesses in 17 rural local authority areas which have a population density of less than two persons per hectare.

The information is not held centrally in the detail requested.

I refer the member to the answer I gave to question S1O-3109 on 15 March 2001.