National Preventive Mechanism requested by the attending care staff – neither authorised nor entitled to assist in restraining patients. The Supreme Court also recognised in a further decision that physical activities, such as holding on to patients to prevent them from leaving the ward, may not be performed by security personnel. The involvement and participation of security services in care activities is therefore impermissible and must be avoided in all cases. The term “care activity” must be broadly interpreted, which is evident from the fact that pursuant to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, holding on to a patient is legally impermissible. The commissions observed, however, that security services are deployed for the purposes of care. The observations of Commission 5 show that in hospitals in Lower Austria employees from the house fire brigade are called in regularly to help in the event of an escalating situation, for example, if it is possible that patients might harm themselves or others, or in dangerous situations for patients and staff. In the event of a de-escalation alarm, an alarm group is informed, to which members of the fire brigade service belong. House fire brigade as security service The care personnel described the deployment of the house fire brigade as security to Commission 5 by using the words “assists” or “only holds limbs, but does not fasten the belts”. These statements suggest that house fire brigade staff can also be involved in care-related activities for which there is no legal basis. A job description for the house fire brigade showed that “help in restraining patients as a member of the de-escalation team when the de-escalation alarm is triggered” is expressly mentioned as a special challenge. The house fire brigade in Mistelbach Regional Hospital carry out regular patrols throughout the building on night shift. In the University Clinic for Psychiatry at Innsbruck Regional Hospital, , the security staff are deployed if there is a risk of absconding. The security company is regularly charged with the transfer of patients from the outpatient area to the locked area. A transfer from the locked area of the Innsbruck Psychiatry Department to the locked area of Kufstein Hospital was also carried out in the presence of an employee of the security company. An eleven-year-old patient was accompanied by an employee of the security company from admission to the locked ward even though his mother was present. Far-reaching tasks performed by security in Innsbruck Regional Hospital In this context, the Innsbruck Regional Court decided in two cases (use of an ankle bracelet and returning an escaped patient) that the involvement of security company staff was not permissible. In one case, a restrained patient 127