Child and youth welfare facilities from persons doing civilian service or on internships. This had little effect on the high workload for those performing the work. Pandemic exacerbates existing problems The situation was particularly bad in facilities where the staffing was already tight. Facilities operated by the Land, in which the employment plans do not permit creating positions at short notice, were badly affected. The situation was problematic in the facilities of municipal department MA 11, in which only four social pedagogues are responsible for eight children and adolescents on an alternating basis. In some shared accommodations, sometimes only two persons could be deployed because of sick leave and quarantine measures. Extremely high workload for the staff The staff spoke of an extremely high workload and a lot of overtime. The social pedagogues who could still be deployed had to work double shifts repeatedly, so that they were in the shared accommodations for 48 hours. Shared accommodations were grouped together at the weekend due to the lack of staff, which meant that the children were cared for by social pedagogues they did not know in an environment that was unfamiliar to them. Municipal department MA 11 provided replacement staff from the pool. This did not work well in all groups, as the new persons can have an unsettling effect on an existing group. One of the shared accommodations visited did not avail of pool staff for this reason. Only one instead of two caregivers per shift In another shared accommodation operated by the City of Vienna, which takes care of adolescents, the shifts which were usually staffed with two persons were changed such that only one person was working at any given time. This meant a considerable strain for the caregivers who were working alone and posed a challenging situation for the team. The staff reported that it was not possible to offer the adolescents effective learning support and properly check the homework during home-schooling. Not all of the minors were able to absorb the material on their own. An additional strain for social pedagogues was that they had to cook and clean themselves, as the housekeeping staff were excused due to being at risk to COVID-19. There was no supervision and no team meetings were held for several months in many facilities in 2020. Quite a few employees complained that they experienced many restrictions by having to wear a mask at work but had no breaks. Other facilities waived the obligation to wear a mask inside buildings in the interest of the children. No trips home at the weekend 71 Another major challenge was that the travel taking the minors home for the weekends was stopped completely during the first lockdown, meaning that it was not possible for all of them to go home. This meant that all of the children were in the facility over the weekend when there is normally only one person working. Additional personnel could be provided for this by some private owners and operators whereas this was not possible in other shared accommodations and took its toll on the quality of care. In addition to this, the children and adolescents were very sad at not being able to see