Child and youth welfare facilities
resources. Apart from that, there are individual projects: a third of the facilities
in Upper Austria offer active family outreach work, for example, to strengthen
and stabilise the family setting and to enable the children and adolescents to
stay in the family system in the long term. In Styria, a specified amount of work
with parents can be individually provided through the deployment of flexible
support since the change in the child and youth welfare system. In Vienna, an
intensive form of working with parents can be offset by applying the system of
the socio-therapeutic place of residence; this is practiced by several facilities.
These projects are to be welcomed, but should however be expanded
nationwide. The Laender should follow the example of Burgenland and
stipulate mandatory additional staff for working with parents in the shared
accommodations. Anchoring working with parents in the facility concepts will
not suffice. Family outreach work cannot be accomplished with the existing
tight staffing levels in the areas of social work or social pedagogy.
Additional human
resources for working
with parents necessary
Working with parents is unthinkable in the shared accommodations operated
by the City of Vienna in which one person has to work alone. It will thus be
necessary to introduce a second person to the work roster in Vienna as is the
standard in socio-pedagogical facilities throughout Austria. Children could be
returned to their families faster and the number of out-of-home cases would
be thus reduced.
Working with parents
impossible with oneperson shifts
XX
Additional resources must be made available for working with parents in the shared
accommodations.
XX
Increased numbers of children returning to their own homes through concentrated
outreach work with the families saves cost in the long term.
XX
Working with families by applying an outreach and activating approach must be used
more.
2.3.7
Placement in acute crisis
Crisis placements serve as an emergency measure when there is an acute risk
to a child’s well-being in the family. The placement is designed to provide
protection and safety for the children on the one hand. On the other hand,
the family system and the child should be assessed in order determine whether
and with which measures it would be possible to allow the child to return
home. This task can no longer be accomplished when crisis facilities are
overcrowded. An important aspect of crisis work is thus lost.
Crisis accommodation is
more than protection in
dangerous situations
In Vienna, the crisis centres have been continuously overcrowded and occupied
by more than the stipulated eight children per facility for many years. They
were also clearly overcrowded throughout most of 2019. In some cases, even
Once again
overcrowding in Vienna
crisis centres in 2019
78
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