Chamber and committees

All authorities receive fundingto support the integrated community school approach. All schools in East and West Dunbartonshire are now involved in delivering integrated children’s services within theirneighbourhoods. This will involve a range of multi-agency approaches and projectswithin school clusters and individual schools. The detail on these projects is notheld centrally as it is for authorities and schools to develop approaches to meetlocal needs.

The official source for data for 16 to 19-year-olds not in education, training or employment (NEET) is the Labour Force Survey. Data on those who are NEET is not available at a Local Authority level from the LFS prior to 2003. Data for 2003 and 2004 is shown in the table 1:

Table 1 Proportion of 16 to 19-Year-Olds Not in Employment, Education or Training, West Dunbartonshire and East Dunbartonshire, 2003-04.

	2003	2004
West Dunbartonshire	16.6%	17.7%
East Dunbartonshire	8.5%	9.8%

Source: Annual Scottish Labour Force Survey.

A wide range of mainstream and targeted policies spanning early years, education, children’s services, regeneration, enterprise and lifelong learning are contributing to reducing the size of the not in education, employment or training (NEET) group in West Dunbartonshire and East Dunbartonshire.

Careers Scotland (CS) deliver targeted advice and support to help prevent young people from becoming NEET and support young people NEET to progress towards the labour market. In West and East Dunbartonshire, enhanced CS resource is available in six secondary schools with the aim of improving school leaver destinations. Activate, an early intervention programme for pupils who may face difficulties in moving into work, runs in 10 schools and has achieved a positive outcome rate of 91% with the first 202 pupils participating. Young people facing significant barriers to entering the labour market can access one to one support from the CS key workers who operate in West and East Dunbartonshire.

I refer the member to the answers to questions S2W-20976 on 2 December 2005 and S2W-21008 answered on 8 December 2005. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

Information about current activity was given in the answer to question S2W-20976 on 2 December 2005. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

In addition, the Department for Work and Pensions’ Pathways to Work programme, which aims to help those on Incapacity Benefit into jobs, will be extended to West and East Dunbartonshire from April 2006.

A priority of the Executive’s Community Regeneration Fund is to help people back into work. £13,368,000 from the Fund has been allocated to West Dunbartonshire and £828,000 to East Dunbartonshire. The Executive is also investing £7 million in Clydebank Rebuilt Urban Regeneration Company to help bring about the economic, social and physical renewal of Clydebank.

West Dunbartonshire is one of seven local authority areas targeted under the Executive’s Closing the Opportunity Gap for reducing the numbers of people claiming work-related benefits by 2010. This will be supported by the Executive’s Employability Framework, which we are developing and plan to launch early in 2006.

It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to ensure the delivery of a range of programmes to tackle and reduce offending amongst young people. Information on the services being delivered in East and West Dunbartonshire can be found on Scotland’s youth justice website at www.youthjusticescotland.gov.uk. Details of the funding being made available to support these services can be found in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 38237). In addition to this funding, the following GAE resources have been identified to support the delivery of core youth justice services:

	East Dunbartonshire	West Dunbartonshire
2005-06	£394,000	£834,000
2006-07	£405,000	£856,000
2007-08	£407,000	£862,000

 

Both East and West Dunbartonshire are participating in phase one implementation of Intensive Support and Monitoring Services. The Executive is providing dedicated funding to the sum of £752,252 this year and next to support this intervention.

The Scottish Executive is tackling pensioner poverty in Scotland in partnership with the UK Government.

Measures by the UK Government to reduce the proportion of older people on low incomes include pension credit, council tax and housing benefit, the winter fuel payment, the £200 council tax refund, and free TV licences. The Executive is taking a number of actions to help maximise disposable income. These include our central heating programme, free local off-peak bus travel (extending to a national scheme), and free personal and nursing care.

The Scottish Executive is helping improve benefits uptake through a range of measures, including establishing a welfare rights officer in the Hillhead area of East Dunbartonshire, jointly funded from the Community Regeneration Fund and the Communities Scotland Wider Role Fund.

This information is not centrally held. The responsibility for implementing national health strategies at a local level primarily lies with NHS boards. I would suggest you contact NHS Argyll and Clyde for this information.

The percentage of older people in East Dunbartonshire and West Dunbartonshire local authority areas receiving intensive home care in the week ending 31 March each year since 1998 is:

	Year
	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
East Dunbartonshire	0.6%	0.6%	0.7%	0.7%	0.8%	0.8%	0.8%	0.8%
West Dunbartonshire	1.4%	1.5%	1.4%	1.6%	1.8%	2.4%	2.9%	2.9%

Notes:

1. Older people means people aged 65 or over.

2. Intensive home care means 10 or more hours per week.

3. Data on intensive home care is not available prior to 1998.

The Executive is taking a number of actions aimed at improving health for children and young people, including all our work to tackle smoking. One of the main factors in smoking prevention for young people will be the introduction of the smoke-free public places legislation in March 2006. This will help de-normalise smoking in Scottish society and help protect young people from the health risks associated with second-hand smoke. In respect of diet, we have mature policies in place. Hungry for Success ensures healthier school meals with minimum nutritional standards are available to school children and we are providing free fruit to primary school children. In addition, reducing harmful drinking by children and young people is one of the key priorities in our Plan for Action on Alcohol.

(i)(1) Smoking:

The following table shows the percentage of cigarette smokers aged 16 years and over in East and West Dunbartonshire between 1999-2000 and 2003-04.

	West Dunbartonshire	East Dunbartonshire
1999-2000	31	22
2001-02	33	19
2003-04	30	18
% change 1999-2000 to 2003-04	-3	-18

Source: Scottish Household Survey.

Note: The earliest data which are available from the Scottish Household Survey is for 1999. There is no available source which provides sufficient numbers to extract meaningful results prior to this. The sample is designed to provide data for each local authority over a two year period.

(i)(2) Alcohol Misuse:

Information on discharges from general acute and psychiatric hospitals with a diagnosis of an alcohol-related condition during 1996-97 to 2001-02 is shown in table 1. Complete data on psychiatric discharges is unavailable for 2002-03, 2003-04 and 2004-05. Table 2 shows the information requested from 1996-97 to 2004-05 for discharges from general acute hospitals only.

Table 1: Scottish Hospital1,2 Discharge Records for West and East Dunbartonshire Residents with an Explicit Diagnosis3 of an Alcohol-Related Condition: 1996-97 to 2001-02

	West Dunbartonshire	East Dunbartonshire
1996-97	689	508
1997-98	777	507
1998-99	858	564
1999-00	1033	576
2000-01	990	568
2001-02	947	502

Notes:

1. Includes acute hospitals, mental illness hospitals and psychiatric units (but excludes maternity hospitals).

2. Information on hospital discharge relates to episodes of in-patient or day case care rather than individual patients. The same patient may account for several hospital admissions during the course of a year (or across years) and will be counted each time in the above table. Transfer cases have also been included.

3. The recording of alcohol misuse may vary in different hospitals. Where alcohol misuse is suspected but unconfirmed it may not be recorded by the hospital.

Source: SMR01 andSMR04.

Table 2: Scottish General Acute Hospital^1,2 Discharge Records for West and East Dunbartonshire Residents with an Explicit Diagnosis³ of an Alcohol-Related Condition: 1996-97 to 2004-05

	West Dunbartonshire	East Dunbartonshire
1996-97	526	437
1997-98	587	436
1998-99	659	502
1999-00	846	524
2000-01	817	518
2001-02	781	459
2002-03	921	480
2003-04	940	489
2004-05P	1034	536

^PProvisional.

Source: SMR01.

Notes:

1. Includes acute hospitals (excludes maternity hospitals, mental illness hospitals and psychiatric units).

2. Information on hospital discharge relates to episodes of in-patient or day case care rather than individual patients. The same patient may account for several hospital admissions during the course of a year (or across years) and will be counted each time in the above table. Transfer cases have also been included.

3. The recording of alcohol misuse may vary in different hospitals. Where alcohol misuse is suspected but unconfirmed it may not be recorded by the hospital.

(ii)(1) Diet:

There is no information available in sufficient numbers to provide meaningful information at local authority level.

(ii)(2) Coronary Heart Disease Mortality:

Information on mortality from coronary heart disease in each year since 1996 is shown in the following table.

Crude Death Rates¹ Per 100,000 Population for Coronary Heart Disease² Within West and East Dunbartonshire: 1996 to 2004

	West Dunbartonshire	East Dunbartonshire
1996	324.2	228.7
1997	339.3	203.1
1998	286.5	188.9
1999	291.3	192.3
2000	271.5	188.7
2001	265.8	167.2
2002	244.5	176.1
2003	283.8	162.7
2004	241.4	153.9

Notes:

1. Registered deaths from the General Register Office for Scotland. The number of deaths is based on the date of registration and main cause of death.

2. Diagnostic information is defined by using the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases 9th revision from 1996-1999 and 10th revision from 2000 onwards (ICD9 codes: 410-414; ICD10 codes: I20-I25).