Social Care Centres for 170 people, 0.5 of FTE for 98 residents, 0.5 of FTE for 97 residents) or employed a psychologist based on a contract of mandate (4 hours a week for 216 residents). The visiting team found similar problems with psychiatric care. The personnel of social care centres informed the representatives of the NPM that the mental health outpatient clinics planned to reduce the number of psychiatric consultations for residents of social care centres or had already introduced such reductions. According to the employees of the NPM, in part of the visited social care centres the only option is to undertake potential intervention measures, but it is impossible to offer continuous therapy which should be a standard, in particular in the social care centres for chronically mentally ill and mentally disabled persons. 7.3 Strengths and good practices The overwhelming majority of visited centres provided an extensive offer of therapeutic, cultural and educational activities to their residents. Available therapies included occupational therapy, bibliotherapy, art therapy, music therapy, silvotherapy, ergotherapy or memory enhancement therapy. The cultural and educational activities available usually include games, plays, excursions, going to the cinema or to the theatre, artistic performances organised in the centres, meetings with invited guests, talks, dancing parties, picnics, meetings with residents of other social care centres and organisation of special events. In some social care centres, there were rehabilitation and physiotherapy rooms with state-of-the-art equipment. The representatives of the NPM also assessed the living conditions in social care centres as good. During the visits, the rooms of the residents were clean, free from unpleasant odours and furnished with furniture and equipment adjusted to the residents’ needs. In some centres, the residents could decorate their rooms according to their own tastes and interests. A good practice followed in all visited centres was to employ nurses, although no such requirement is included in the applicable regulations. The initiatives in some social care centres deserve mentioning as worth implementing in other centres. – The Social Care Centre in Chorzów developed a three-stage system of assistance in becoming independent. The first basic stage consists in learning simple self-care activities from all spheres of personal and social life. The second extended stage (carried out in a study) covers the practicing of selfcare activities, the strengthening the skills of functioning in a group of peo81