The Executive is currently consulting on the introduction of greater powers to stop vandalism, crime and other antisocial behaviour in young people, including electronic tagging for under-16s, antisocial behaviour orders and powers to disperse groups of under-16s, as well as parental orders with the option of imprisoning parents who do not comply.
However, Children in Scotland said last week that not enough was being done to link problems in children's early years with antisocial behaviour in later life.
Shelly Gray, the charity's policy and participation officer, said, 'The Executive is doing a lot of positive things, but we are concerned that the work it is doing with early years gets related to other policy issues, particularly antisocial behaviour.'
She stressed the need to integrate services for early years children and their families to improve joint work between education, health and social services. 'Community schools offer a big opportunity to co-locate services for families to access those services.
'A universal point of contact, a gateway to people that need special services they can access, reduces the stigma, because it is part of the mainstream service,' Ms Gray added.
Liberal Democrat MSP Donald Gorrie also criticised the Executive for not including early years in its approach to tackling antisocial problems. He said, 'We are focusing on possible punishment of people who get into trouble, but we must consider the whole of life, including nursery education and support for families.'
But communities minister Margaret Curran defended the Executive's proposals on the grounds that they included new opportunities for young people to change, support for parents and better co-operation between support services. However, there was no mention in the proposals of how intervention during children's early years can prevent them from developing antisocial tendencies as they got older.
Last month the Welsh Assembly expanded its Incredible Years programme, aimed at preventing children developing antisocial behaviour. The programme can be used with children as young as two and research from around the globe has shown its value as teachers, nursery workers and parents have been taught how to work with children to help them express emotional problems, which can end up being manifested in bad behaviour.
The Scottish Executive is expected to introduce an antisocial behaviour bill later this year.
