Child and youth welfare facilities no longer a taboo topic but must be openly addressed, discussed and reflected on. The fact that this does not always succeed on its own but a signal from the outside can be necessary can be seen as an indication of the importance and effectiveness of independent external monitoring. XX  Additional training of the staff in the Nursing and Residential Homes Residence Act is necessary in many facilities. 2.3.11 Discrimination of unaccompanied minor refugees Unaccompanied minor refugees in Austria still do not have the same treatment and the same protection as parentless Austrian children. Due to the lower daily allowances within the framework of reception conditions under the Basic Provision Agreement, unaccompanied minor refugees receive neither the therapeutic nor social-work-related care they need (see details in the NPM Report 2018, pp. 81 et seq.). Staff without the relevant training still work in the facilities. Advanced training programmes in the area of violence prevention and de-escalation in particular are required, but are not usually financed. The child and youth welfare departments do not exercise the technical supervision over the facilities for unaccompanied minor refugees in all Laender. This causes an objectively unjustified unequal treatment of unaccompanied minor refugees if there is no awareness of quality development in the interest of the adolescents in the basic reception conditions framework. Adolescents who have experienced being a refugee need contact persons who take them seriously, build a relationship with them, but at the same time encourage and enable them to take up meaningful activities. In all of the Laender the NPM criticised that the size and structure of the facilities for unaccompanied minor refugees do not comply with the usual child and youth welfare standards. In Lower Austria for example, there are contractual agreements with owners and operators that permit occupancy of up to 48 unaccompanied minor refugees. The regional government explained that Lower Austria exceeded the quota for accepting unaccompanied minor refugees agreed between the Federal Government and the Laender by far at the peak of the refugee crisis in 2015, and special care structures and group sizes were contractually fixed in order to prevent minor refugees from becoming homeless. Due to the actual prevailing conditions from mid-2019, the regional government claimed there are no more “large facilities” because all of those for unaccompanied minor refugees now have an average occupancy of 25 persons or less based on the falling numbers of applications for political asylum. This group size does not leave scope for individual care either. Group size and security companies 84

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