Child and youth welfare facilities Worsening through standard cost model feared It must be noted in this context that minors with special individual needs require several hours of individual care every day, as they can usually only take part in school class for a short period and have to be collected early. Unlike the children and adolescents cared for in socio-pedagogical residential groups to date, they also need individual care in the afternoon. They have to be taken out of the group frequently because they cannot be integrated in groups with eight other children for a longer period of time. Such individual care is not manageable with the additional staffing of 0.25 FTE per child with special individual needs stipulated in the draft regulation, as even at maximum capacity with four minors requiring special care there is only one additional FTE. In the socio-therapeutic groups where these children have been cared for to date, there was a far higher staffing ratio with a maximum permissible group size of eight children as opposed to the planned nine children. Besides, the higher daily allowance could be settled for every child with no time limit, making it possible to provide an additional high-quality, needsbased programme. Now the “individual care” model can only be settled for a maximum of four children so that even at full capacity less funds are available for the groups. The additional package also has a time limit. This too was not the case to date, as the higher daily allowance covered the total care time. It is also unrealistic that all shared accommodations will accept minors with special needs, which can be attributable to the composition of the groups due to the age range or different types of problems. The peculiarity of group dynamics in large facilities limits the implementation of the concept of social inclusive housing in the socio-pedagogical care centres of the Land. Another problem is the necessity of a connection to a department of child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy, which is not the case in many facilities. If, however, just a few or no minors with special individual needs can be accepted per shared accommodation for this reason, it can be assumed that the basic model intended for residential care will not suffice to guarantee the customary quality of socio-pedagogical care provided to date. It is thus to be feared that the, in principle, positive introduction of inclusive residential groups will result in a deterioration of socio-pedagogical care if more staff is not made available for implementing the changes or if the required funds are calculated too sparingly. Savings are always at the expense of the already disadvantaged children and adolescents who cannot grow up in their family. The NPM thus recommended raising the care ratio in the regulation and aligning the daily allowances with the increased demand. Less therapies for the partial residential areas 75 A worsening of the situation is also feared for minors who are in partial residential care. They need more therapy in the form of logo, occupational and physiotherapies because they have a lot of catching up to do due to what was missed in their parental home. The therapies were paid for by child and youth welfare services to date. In the future, the health care system will finance these therapies. However, this cannot be implemented in practice, as there are no local out-patient care structures in many areas in Lower Austria. The NPM

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