Child and youth welfare facilities support and out-of-home care are or could be in the optimal case; the latter clearly being a more intensive infringement of the right to family life from a human rights point of view. Nevertheless, the Laender themselves should scrutinise the differences in terms of whether the availability and accessibility of their range of services and packages of measures for child and youth welfare prior to out-of-home care is sufficient to be able to offer protection against further risks to the child’s well-being as soon as possible in cooperation with the legal guardian(s). Some 1.9 million persons have been living in Vienna since the beginning of 2020, making it thus the second largest German-speaking city in Europe in terms of population; the number of inhabitants has grown continuously in recent years. Growth was particularly high in 2015 when a large number of asylum seekers were accepted. In light of the constant multiple risks inherent in the metropolitan area, child and youth welfare services are faced with special challenges both in the conception and management of a wide range of subsidies and support and the financing of the same. From the NPM’s point of view, however, it would appear to be imperative due to the primacy of children’s well-being that the child and youth welfare services can offer and deploy sufficient resources even for longer-term and flexible support measures in families, if required and when there are signs of risk to the child’s wellbeing. The basic conditions for needs-based non-residential support for children and adults in precarious situations, with special risk factors for challenging parenting situations, strong socioeconomic or mental (multiple) strain and/ or migration or refugee experience are more complex in urban settings than in rural areas that are less harmful to development. The continued rise in residential care between 2017 and 2018 cannot be explained by an increase in risk evaluation procedures in Vienna, as these have even decreased in recent years. Special situation in Vienna The trend is completely different in Carinthia. The Land that was in the same position as Vienna in relation to out-of-home care in 2017 reported a 37.6% increase in risk evaluations in 2018. This is attributable to a campaign in cooperation with the Ombuds Office for Children and Youths that called for increased awareness in relation to suspected risks to children’s well-being. Despite the fact that the campaign bound resources, it succeeded in reducing the number of out-of-home cases by expanding non-residential care and intensive counselling for families. This is a positive example of how the expansion of early, customised parental support can result in success stories inside the family. Decrease in residential care in Carinthia The expansion of non-residential care has also made an impact in Salzburg and Styria. 70