Child and youth welfare facilities their families for weeks. The loss of positive relationships to the family and the daily structure exacerbated behavioural disorders in groups that were not stable. Unlike in spring 2020, personal contacts and trips home were barely affected during the second and third lockdowns from November 2020. Instead, different measures were used in all of the Laender to keep the risk of infection as low as possible. Insufficient staff was also the reason why in some shared accommodations the children were not or seldom taken out for a walk and the house councils and team meetings did not take place. As a result, the atmosphere in these shared accommodations gradually deteriorated and was very tense. In addition to the staff shortages, inadequate technical equipment created problems during the school closures. Even though the owners and operators had purchased additional laptops and tablets during the summer months, there were not enough devices in some shared accommodations for the subsequent school closures. The internet connection was not stable enough in some shared accommodations when all of the children had home-schooling at the same time, or it was unsuitable for this purpose. Inadequate technical equipment The isolation of ill and positive tested asymptomatic children and suspected cases was not possible in all shared accommodations due to a lack of space. In a facility of one private operator, children with a positive test were moved to an isolation shared accommodation at the head office. The rooms in an external residential group in Lower Austria were used to house infected children and adolescents. The minors who normally live at this location had to move to a house on the grounds of a home many kilometres away from the shared accommodation. This was extremely stressful for them because the shared accommodation is their home. It was particularly problematic for children and adolescents whose care setting has been changed several times. One adolescent whose former shared accommodation had been closed down just a few months previously refused after returning to the external residential group to go on summer holidays because he feared losing his place in his group. Children had to vacate shared accommodation In a crisis centre in Lower Austria, children and adolescents were made to shower and change their clothes after a weekend at home or receiving family visits in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infections even though there is no evidence that COVID-19 infections can be transmitted from clothing. External persons were not permitted to enter the shared accommodations meaning that visits could only take place in the visiting room or in the garden. In crisis centres in Lower Austria, the clinical psychologists had to work from their home office during the first lockdown in March 2020 with the result that diagnoses could not be made for the children and adolescents. For this reason, their stay in the crisis centre was extended unnecessarily. Excessive precautionary measures 72