2.1 VISITS TO RETIREMENT HOMES As particularly good practice, we noticed and commended the boxes and boards intended for storage of items and hanging of photos relating to the past lives of the residents in order to enhance their memory, and which also contribute to their calming down if they become restless. 2.1.1 Thematic visits to retirement homes The purpose of thematic visits was to examine the appropriateness of the treatment of the elderly in the evening and during the night. To this end, the NPM submitted a survey in 2019 to 112 retirement homes in Slovenia, and selected six homes on the basis of their response. The main criteria for selection were the frequency of using sleeping pills among the residents and regional (territorial) distribution. The NPM thus visited the Prebold Unit of Franc Salamon Trbovlje Retirement Home (13 August 2019), Kranj Retirement Home (20 August 2019), Mengeš Retirement Home (22 August 2019), Ptuj Retirement Home (15 October 2019), DEOS Trnovo Retirement Home (22 October 2019) and Izola Retirement Home (23 October 2019). The visits were attended by the expert from the psychiatric field and special attention was paid to medications that the residents receive in the evening, especially sleeping pills. When speaking with the staff and residents, we tried to establish possible deficiencies when treating residents at the relevant time in order to provide recommendations that would (further) improve the situation or treatment of the elderly. The NPM gave concrete recommendations on the basis of findings when visiting individual retirement homes. Despite particularities of certain institutions, we can provide several joint findings or recommendations that point to general deficiencies and should thus be highlighted: • • 30 If special protection measures (SPM) are implemented in a retirement home or these could be implemented, suitable records must be prepared, which would be completed as per Article 29 of the ZDZdr if these measures are introduced. As during regular visits, we also noticed on the occasion of the thematic visit that forms were not uniform and did not consist of all the sections they should. We thus again recommended that forms be supplemented with sections on measures implemented before SPM (e.g. de-escalation techniques) and measures (e.g. therapeutic discussion) applied after implementing the measure. Carrying out activities intended for the elderly is extremely important all days of the week (which was also revealed during the NPM’s thematic visit to retirement homes in 2016). We recommended several times that the institutions regularly draft lists of activities for individual wards which are published on notice boards on wards and are accessible to the residents and their relatives, and make sure that the activities on the lists are actually carried out. THE REPORT OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS OMBUDSMAN OF THE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA ON IMPLEMENTING THE TASKS OF THE NPM