Institutions for persons with disabilities X Day-care centres should remain open in crisis situations. X If day-care centres are closed, contact to caregivers should be maintained where possible. The technical conditions for this should be provided. X Crisis situations for which those affected are not at fault shall in no way result in the loss of places in day-care centres. 2.4.5 Round the clock in shared accommodation During the first lockdown, the day-care centres were closed from mid-March to mid-June 2020 and only opened gradually thereafter. However, reports from the commissions indicated that in autumn 2020 too some day-care centres were closed again. In addition to the curfew and visiting ban, this meant that persons with disabilities, who live in residential facilities, had to spend all of their time in their facility without exception. The closure of the day-care centres was particularly problematic in institutions and facilities with little space. There was nowhere else to go, which caused increased tension between the residents. Where available, gardens were of course used. In other cases, facilities organised 1:1 walks. Efforts to plan diverse activities during the day In some cases, more intensive care was possible because some of the residents were living with their families again. This meant that fewer persons had to be cared for thereby freeing up staff resources. However, this was not the norm. Commissions reported that the residential facilities tried to adapt the daily planning, to intensify activity programmes and individual care, and thereby to compensate the absence of day-care centres. The commissions reported of individual daily plans, which served to address specific wishes and needs of those affected. However, not only the cramped conditions but also the “social distancing” in general created problems for many persons with disabilities. They perceived the restricted bodily contact as difficult in particular. This is, above all, problematic because many persons in residential facilities do not live with a partner but at the same time have a great need for bodily contact. Adequate information imperative 93 Persons can usually orientate themselves better in emergency situations if they understand what is going on around them and how they should behave. This applies to persons without disabilities in the same way as it does to persons with disabilities. It is thus imperative that persons with disabilities in care are informed in an adequate way about the pandemic, what behaviour is expected of them and what next steps are planned. The NPM has repeatedly criticised in the past that too little attention is paid to expedient communication in many institutions. In particular, non-verbal persons with multiple disabilities