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The Scottish Executive willlook at what steps are required to give greater responsibilities to communitycouncils.

With regard to any statutorydevolution of budgets and decision-making powers to community councils, the Executive intends to seek the views of Parliament and relevant stakeholders inorder to identify any consensus for going forward.

We are committed to workingwith education professionals to help every child, in every school, achievetheir full potential.

Affordable housing is broadlydefined in Scottish Planning Policy 3: Planning for Housing as follows“Housing of reasonable quality that is affordable to people on modest incomes. Insome places the market can provide some or all of the affordable housing that isneeded, but in other places it is necessary to make housing available at a costbelow market value, to meet an identified need.”

The main categories of affordablehousing are set out in Planning Advice Note 74, available on the Executive’swebsite at .

Affordability, in terms of therents and prices paid by tenants and purchasers, varies from one location to anotherso should be determined in a way which takes account of incomes at the local level.

Yes.

ChildLine can currentlyrespond to about 60% of the calls it receives. Recent additional ScottishExecutive funding will allow ChildLine to expand its current services andincrease the response rate to around 80% for this financial year and beyond.

Specific resources madeavailable by the Executive to local authorities to safeguard young runawaysare:

a guidance pack which issuedto Child Protection Committees in July 2003 on vulnerable children and youngpeople which makes recommendations about the care of young runaways,

funding of £838,661 between2002 and 2008 from the Youth Crime Prevention Fund in support of Aberlour ChildCare Trust’s pilot project, Running Other Choices (ROC), which provides ashort-term refuge for young people aged 12 to 15, and

strengthened ChildProtection Committees as an outcome of the recently-concluded three-year ChildProtection Reform Programme which is improving multi-agency service provisionfor this (and other) vulnerable groups of children and young people.

More generally, localauthorities use their GAE provision to support local services as they see fit,and this includes the flexibility to commission or directly provide servicesfor young runaways on the basis of local need.

The Scottish Executive hasrecently provided additional funding of £536,300 (over 2007-09) to expand thecapacity of Glasgow and Aberdeen Centres and to set up a new base in Edinburgh.

The Executive has alsorecently invested in a freephone national telephone and information gatewayservice which directs the general public to local child protection serviceswhen they call to report concerns about a child or young person. This nationalgateway phone service is intended to complement existing phone-based childprotection counselling services.

The Executive continues tosupport ChildLine’s Anti-Bullying helpline and the enquire helpline (whichprovides advice and information on additional support for learning).

The Know the Score helplineand two other health-related helplines are run on behalf of the Executive bythe Department of Health. The Know the Score campaign, which includes thehelpline, provides drugs information and advice to young people.

Invitations have recentlyissued to the following organisations for membership of a proposed nationalworking group on young runaways:

Aberlour Child Care Trust

Association of Chief PoliceOfficers Scotland (ACPOS)

Association of Directors ofSocial Work (ADSW)

Association of Directors ofEducation in Scotland (ADES)

Barnardos

Convention of Scottish LocalAuthorities (Cosla)

The Scottish Coalition forYoung Runaways (Edinburgh, Lothian and Borders Child Protection Office (ELBCPO)is the Coalition’s nominee)

Scottish Children’s ReporterAdministration (SCRA)

Scottish Institute forResidential Child Care (SIRCC)

YouthLink Scotland.

A representativeorganisation for the Child Protection Committees is being identified, as is arepresentative for Parenting Across Scotland. Those representatives will beinvited shortly.

The Working Group on YoungRunaways has not met yet. The first meeting is scheduled for 25 June 2007.

The Executive does not havespecific plans at present to issue guidance to local authorities on thismatter, nor does it hold information centrally about steps taken by localauthorities to provide short-term refuge. To address the issue of short-termrefuge at a national level, the Executive is funding the Glasgow-based AberlourRunning Other Choices (ROC) project which provides short-term refuge for youngpeople aged 12 to 15 who run away from home or care. This funding support (2002-08)is on a pilot project basis.

The Executive’s guidancepack on Vulnerable Children and Young People, which was published in July 2003,contains specific recommendations on young runaways. Local authorities areexpected to have developed local protocols which give effect to the guidance inways which best suit their own circumstances.

The Working Group on YoungRunaways has not met yet. The first meeting is scheduled for 25 June 2007.