Chamber and committees

There was wide consultation with all sections of business before the scheme was announced. VisitScotland and the Scottish Tourism Forum have been consulted throughout the implementation phase.

NHS trusts are responsible for recruiting staff and making arrangements, that best respond to the assessed needs of their areas. In reaching decisions in this regard, I expect all available advice and guidelines to be taken into account, including that within our published guidance, which calls for NHS boards to consider establishing a specialist multi-disciplinary team, either at their own hand or on a consortia basis.

Statistics relating to the children's hearings system are an operational matter for the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration. National statistics are available in the Parliament's Reference Centre (Bib. number 18780).

Every local authority in Scotland has been given a provisional allocation of funding to support activities, designed to promote the role of sport in diverting children and young people from crime or behaviour likely to lead to this type of activity.The provisional allocation is based on the size of school population in the local authority area and on the levels of deprivation found in the area. There is also a weighting for the three Islands authorities, to ensure that they have meaningful allocations.

A total of £25.5 million over four years has been allocated to tackle youth offending. The following table shows the allocation by local authority:

Authority	Restorative Justice Grant 2001-02	2001-02 and 2002-03	2003-04
Aberdeen City	£78,443	£166,000	£333,000
Aberdeenshire	£94,095	£106,000	£212,000
Angus	£42,311	£76,000	£153,000
Argyll & Bute	£33,078	£56,000	£112,000
Clackmannanshire	£19,850	£51,000	£101,000
Dumfries and Galloway	£55,557	£101,000	£202,000
Dundee	£56,472	£207,000	£414,000
East Ayrshire	£48,248	£131,000	£263,000
East Dunbartonshire	£42,612	£51,000	£101,000
East Lothian	£34,195	£65,000	£130,000
East Renfrewshire	£17,950	£35,331	£89,000
Edinburgh	£163,340	£406,000	£812,000
Falkirk	£52,700	£131,000	£262,000
Fife	£126,460	£314,000	£629,000
Glasgow	£436,540	£1,086,000	£2,171,000
Highland	£63,440	£158,000	£316,000
Inverclyde	£41,620	£103,000	£207,000
Midlothian	£27,060	£67,000	£135,000
Moray	£21,490	£53,000	£107,000
North Ayrshire	£66,860	£166,000	£333,000
North Lanarkshire	£143,550	£357,000	£714,000
Orkney	£3,400	£20,000	£40,000
Perth and Kinross	£32,730	£81,000	£163,000
Renfrewshire	£76,280	£190,000	£379,000
Scottish Borders	£24,010	£60,000	£119,000
Shetland	£4,500	£20,000	£40,000
South Ayrshire	£34,300	£85,000	£171,000
South Lanarkshire	£110,920	£276,000	£552,000
Stirling	£25,370	£63,000	£126,000
West Dunbartonshire	£57,230	£142,000	£285,000
West Lothian	£58,250	£145,000	£290,000
Western Isles	£5,570	£20,000	£40,000
Total	£2 million	£5 million /£5 million	£10 million

All authorities have multi-agency youth justice teams in place. The Executive is completing a mapping exercise of all local authorities to measure their progress in working with children and young people who offend or are at risk of offending. The results will be available in the Parliament's Reference Centre shortly. We are also holding quarterly national networking events for youth justice practitioners to disseminate good practice and to support policy development.

Costs will vary. However, the estimated cost of training a pre-registration mental health nursing student is around £30,000. To train a community psychiatric nurse can add a further £21,000.

The following table shows the number of males treated in an acute general hospital, mental illness hospital or psychiatric unit between July 2000 and June 2001:

	Anorexia Nervosa	Bulimia
Male patients	7	4

Source: ISD Scotland, SMR01/04.Provisional.A sample of general practitioner consultations, produces figures which are too low to allow a meaningful, robust national estimate of those treated by primary care services.

The published guidance on the best organisation of eating disorder services invites agencies to explore all mediums that can offer improved access to services and advice.A teleconferencing link is already established between the Royal Cornhill Hospital in Aberdeen and Lerwick Health Centre, with validated positive results for patients and therapists for all conditions including eating disorders. The Grampian Eating Disorder Service has also piloted the use of teleconferencing for people with eating disorders from Aberdeen, Peterhead and Fraserburgh.The Scottish Telemedicine Action Forum has recently funded a project designed to further extend the existing specialist psychological therapies for eating disorders service to the whole of the Grampian area. More generally, the Remote and Rural Area Resource Initiative has been established to advise and help with more effective means of delivering care in rural and remote areas of Scotland.

Specific guidance offering agencies a template for change and improvement in the provision and organisation of services, promotion, prevention and care was published in October last year.The visiting Mental Health and Well Being Support Group has also announced that eating disorders will feature for particular attention, with other topics, in their second round review of the strategic approach to change and improvement in mental health services by the care agencies.The outcome reports of progress made in each case, are published within four weeks of each visit and are available on the support group's website at:www.show.scot.nhs.uk/mhwbsg.