National Preventive Mechanism 5.3.3 Critical personnel situation in shared accommodations and residential homes The high personnel fluctuation level seems to be currently creating major problems for many facilities. This causes constant breaking of relationships, which the children experience as very stressful. On visits, minors name the loss of care givers spontaneously when asked about negative experiences in the shared accommodation. High personnel fluctuation On the one hand, the personnel fluctuation is the cause of adverse working conditions, and on the other, it is also the consequence thereof. As a result, the working conditions for the remaining staff become more stressful, as they have to perform additional shifts. The strained personnel situation means that new staff is often not trained. They are left alone with the responsibility too soon and work night shifts without support after just a few weeks, often – as in a residential home in Lower Austria – with responsibility for several groups. New and in the beginning very committed employees with little work experience cannot cope with this stress. Confronted with the criticism of the personnel situation by Commission 1 and following the Commission’s suggestion to increase personnel levels, a private operator reported that they were informed by the Land during ongoing daily rate negotiations that they already employed too much staff. Facilities in which the commissions highlighted similar problems in previous years indicated no improvement in the situation on follow-up visits. In many cases, the situation had even deteriorated. The facilities seem to have difficulty leaving this vicious circle. When facilities in the sector already have a bad reputation due to permanent personnel bottlenecks, there are fewer applications for vacancies. This makes it difficult to fill vacant positions quickly. Experts view the frequent change of carers in out-of-home care as highly critically, above all, due to considerations surrounding attachment theories. The assumption is that children cannot develop a secure base, which is one of the main characteristics of a secure attachment, if they are cared for by constantly changing persons. Most children and adolescents have attachment disorders in out-of-home care in particular. If they are forced to experience frequent breaks in relationships there is a risk that they will be re-traumatised and have even more behavioural disorders. The frequent change of personnel is a stress factor for children suffering from attachment-related trauma. This is evident in the many children and adolescents in these facilities who regularly take psychotropic medication and are bound to child and adolescent psychiatry. Frequent change of personnel is very problematic It is clearly evident that there are other shortcomings in facilities with a strained personnel situation and high fluctuation. The broken relationships 143