Chamber and committees

Our Child Care Strategy is about supporting children and families. Good quality affordable child care not only benefits children, but can help parents to take up work or study. We allocated £16.75 million to local authorities through Child Care Strategy funding in the current year, and this will rise to £40.65 million by 2006. Officials have worked jointly with colleagues in the Department of Trade and Industry to develop a Work Life balance Toolkit for Child Care Partnerships. The Toolkit will help Child Care Partnerships engage with local employers on the business case for adopting family friendly policies.We are liaising with the Department for Work and Pensions on the new child care partnership manager's role in Jobcentre Plus districts. From April 2003 child care partnership managers will aim to help improve the information flow on child care services, particularly for lone parents, to encourage more parents into employment.

The information requested is given in the following table. Allocations for 1997-98 and 1998-99 relate solely to the former Urban Programme.

	1997-98(£000)	1998-991(£000)	1999-20002(£000)	2000-01(£000)	2001-02(£000)	2002-033(£000)
Urban Programme/Core SIP allocation	2,993	2,300	2,981	2947	2692	2979
Ferguslie Park	-	1,041	947	1,000	900	-
Drugs Misuse	-	-	-	-	60	69
Support Costs	-	-	-	-	173	126
Empowering Communities	-	-	-	-	60	60
Total	2,993	3,341	3,928	3,947	3,885	3,234

All allocations exclude carry forward (EYF) from previous year.Notes:1. Ring-fenced allocation for Ferguslie Park included in the allocation to the Paisley Partnership from 1 April 1998. 2. Allocation for Ferguslie Park subsequently reduced (to £662,372) to meet the partnership's expenditure profile. 3. Ferguslie Park allocation subsumed within the core SIP allocation to Paisley from 2002-03.

Detailed spend on drug-related activities at a local level is not held centrally. However, some information is contained within the Argyll and Clyde Alcohol and Drug Action Team Corporate Action Plan which can be found on the national drugs website at:http://www.drugmisuse.isdscotland.org/.Funding for drug-related activities is not allocated directly to Drug Action Teams, but through statutory funding streams. Funding for drugs-specific treatment services allocated to Argyll and Clyde NHS Board from 1998-99 to 2003-04 is as follows:Treatment

NHS Board	1998-99(£000)	1999-2000(£000)	2000-01(£000)	2001-02(£000)	2002-03(£000)	2003-04(£000)
Argyll and Clyde	709	901	984	1,111	1,338	1,338

The bulk of the funding for drugs education and for rehabilitation is made available through GAE settlement. However, additional funding for drugs-specific education and rehabilitation was allocated as follows for the period 2001-02 to 2003-04.Drugs Education in Schools

Council Area	2001-02(£)
East Renfrewshire*	21,350
Renfrewshire	32,989
West Dunbartonshire*	20,970
Inverclyde	18,500
Argyll and Bute	17,552

Rehabilitation Services

Council Area	2001-02(£000)	2002-03(£000)	2003-04(£000)
East Renfrewshire*	119	119	119
Renfrewshire	235	235	235
West Dunbartonshire*	126	126	126
Inverclyde	113	113	113
Argyll and Bute	119	119	119

In addition, the following funding was allocated to local authorities for drug-related work with young people and families.Changing Children's Services Fund

Council Area	2001-02 to 2003-04(£000)
East Renfrewshire*	139
Renfrewshire	668
West Dunbartonshire*	510
Inverclyde	375
Argyll and Bute	259

Note:* Only part of the council area is contained within the boundaries of Argyll and Clyde Alcohol and Drug Action Team.

We have introduced and are promoting a variety of volunteering initiatives across Scotland aimed at increasing the number of people who take part in voluntary activity. Specifically, we have allocated £4.5 million towards developing the Active Communities Initiative throughout Scotland. Its objectives are:to bring about more positive attitudes to volunteering and community action;to locate volunteering and community action at the heart of Scottish Executive policy;to broaden the range of people involved, andto increase the number of people involved.In addition, we have established and funded a national network of Volunteer Centres across Scotland. Renfrewshire has had a Volunteer Centre since 1999. We have also introduced the Valuing Volunteers small grant scheme to enable small, local, service delivery organisation to apply for a grant to recognise, recruit, reward and resource volunteering activity. Over £4,000 has been distributed amongst nine projects in Renfrewshire, during 2002, each receiving grants of up to £500.

All education authorities are being asked to set for the first time, via the School Improvement Framework, a target for the average level of qualifications gained by the lowest attaining 20% of S4 pupils for the academic year 2004-05. Each education authority is responsible for agreeing with its schools what action will be taken to improve performance. The Scottish Executive will be monitoring progress and providing support to authorities and schools in sharing information about effective strategies.

Funding from sportscotland for school sport is available on the basis of applications from local authorities and/or individual schools, not allocations. Since the commencement of the National Lottery, school sport in Renfrewshire has benefited as follows.

Programme	Funding
TOP	£73,320
School Sport Co-ordinator	£238,640
Active Primary School (Exchequer Programme)	£85,000
Total	£396,960

Details of local initiatives are contained in the Corporate Action Plans for the Greater Glasgow Drug Action Team and the Argyll and Clyde Alcohol and Drug Action Team. The plans can be accessed at http://www.drugmisuse.isdscotland.org/dat/cap.htm.The Renfrewshire area is benefiting from activities at national level, supported by the Executive's £130 million additional investment over three years from 2001-02 to 2003-04. Drugs education is now provided in 98% of Scottish schools. Our Know the Score Drugs Communications strategy is helping to raise public awareness about the risks from drugs, and to signpost where help and advice can be obtained throughout Scotland.Our £13 million additional investment in treatment for drug misusers is helping to expand needle exchange facilities, and methadone programmes, which help to reduce levels of injecting and sharing of potentially contaminated equipment. Figures provided in the answer to written question S1W-31649 today in respect of drug injecting and sharing of equipment in Renfrewshire show an improvement in 2001-02 over the previous year.

The 2000 national prevalence study estimated that there are 2,441 individuals who are misusing opiates or benzodiazepines within Renfrewshire. These figures do not include drugs such as psychostimulants, cannabis etc. The figures correspond to a prevalence rate of 2.5% of the Renfrewshire population aged between 15 and 54. This compares to a Scottish prevalence rate of 2.0% Source: Estimating the National and Local Prevalence of Problem Drug Misuse in Scotland:http://www.drugmisuse.isdscotland.org/publications/abstracts/prevalence.htm.The following table provides information on the number of "new" individual patients/clients reported to the Scottish Drug Misuse Database from Renfrewshire.The Database collects anonymous information about new problem drug users presenting at a broad range of drug services across Scotland, including general practices.Reports^1,2,3 to the Scottish Drug Misuse Database 1996-97 to 2001-02 New Individual Patients/Clients Resident in Renfrewshire

	1996-97	1997-98	1998-99	1999-2000	2000-01	2001-02
New individuals	308	554	661	511	516	472
No. of individuals providing information on injecting	298	536	604	474	472	434
% who have ever injected4	25	29	31	35	40	34
No.of injectors providing information on sharing4,5	56	120	130	94	114	112
% who have ever shared	57	46	45	47	53	365

Notes:1. All figures in this table exclude penal establishment inmates and information received from needle exchanges.2. The database collects anonymous information about new problem drug users presenting at a broad range of drug services across Scotland, including general practice.3. It is emphasised that the information held on the Scottish Drug Misuse Database relates to new patients/clients only. The definition of "new" is (a) the person is attending the particular service for the first time ever, or (b) the person has attended before but not within the previous six months.4. Includes both current and past injectors.5. When looking at trends between the years 1996-97 to 2000-01 and 2001-02, it is important to note that in April 2001 the sharing question changed from collecting data on sharing injecting equipment to collecting more detailed information on sharing needles/syringes and sharing spoons/water/filters/solution. A previous ISD study on outcomes suggested that the new information on sharing needles/syringes could be equated to the previous information on sharing injecting equipment. Caution is, however, recommended when comparing 2001-02 data with previous years.

Each local authority area has a community safety partnership, therefore there are two partnerships in Renfrewshire, one led by Renfrewshire Council and the other led by East Renfrewshire Council.The community safety partnership in East Renfrewshire was established in January 2001. The Renfrewshire community safety partnership was approved by the council and partners in January 2002, although a Community Safety Task Group for the area had been established since October 2001.

Since 1997, we have contributed to the safety of our communities in Scotland through initiatives such as the funding of CCTV, the formation of Community Safety Partnerships, an increase in police numbers and resources and other locally based community safety projects with the dual purpose of not only reducing actual crime but the fear of crime also. Recent survey information suggests that Scotland is a safer place to live compared to the rest of the UK not only for older people but also generally, and that the fear of crime amongst older people is also lower.We have set a target to reduce the fear of crime in the Justice section of the recently published Building a Better Scotland - Spending Proposals 2003-06. Whilst no specific target or date has been set for this to be achieved, we aim to reduce the fear of crime for all in our communities by successfully meeting other targets within the spending proposals to reduce specific areas of serious crime. This should have a positive effect on how safe our communities feel. We shall use the Scottish Crime Survey 2004 results to measure progress.