Child and youth welfare facilities 2.3.8 Too many placements in other Laender Obstacles to maintaining the relationship to the family The right to contact to both parents anchored in Article 9 (3) Convention on the Rights of the Child as one of the most important children’s rights is also included in Article 2 (1) of the Federal Constitutional Act on the Rights of Children, and thus guaranteed under constitutional law. The lack of special care places depicted in the previous section is, however, still frequently the reason why many Laender house minors far away from their families in another Land. As a consequence relationships break, which makes returning the minors to the family even more difficult if not impossible. A current survey based on 2016 fortunately indicated that there has been a slight decrease in the number of children and adolescents housed in other Laender since the first time the data were recorded by the NPM in 2014. An increasing trend was observed only in Carinthia. Major differences within Austria At 29.22%, Burgenland has the highest proportion of minors housed outside of their own Land. This is even more astounding as, relatively speaking, there are plenty of socio-pedagogical and socio-therapeutic residential groups in Burgenland, yet just a third of the available places are occupied by children from Burgenland. The reason for this appears to be an allowance that the private operators in Burgenland can request for minors from other Laender, thus making caring for them more attractive. For this reason, consideration is being given in Burgenland to adopting the model that has been practised in Upper Austria for several years. The model allows a maximum of 15% of the total number of minors in a facility to be from other Laender. The number of minors from other Laender in Upper Austria has fallen from 126 to 84 since this rule was introduced. Some improvements noticeable Since 2012 Vienna has reduced placements outside of the Land from 354 to 198 by increasing the number of care places. In Salzburg and Styria too, the proportion of minors housed in other Laender has decreased since 2014. By contrast, at 23.88 %, Styria still has far too many minors housed outside of their own Land. In Lower Austria, placements in another Land have had to be authorised by the Department of Child and Youth Welfare of the regional government for quite a while now. Furthermore, this is also only permissible if no other adequate places are available in Lower Austria. At 3.46%, the number of minors housed in other Laender is correspondingly low and has been falling constantly since 2014. The structures in Vorarlberg come closest to fulfilling the children’s rights requirements. Just 2.16 % of the minors housed out of home live in facilities in another Land. 74