1.1 Visits to social care institutions (residential homes for the elderly) When a resident dies in a two-bed room, a divider is erected in the middle of the room, or the roommate is temporarily escorted out of the room. When death is confirmed, the deceased is taken to a farewell room or a chapel (Ptuj), where his relatives and residents can say their goodbyes. Relatives are also allowed to stay with dying residents. In some places relatives are allowed to sleep at the home and receive basic meals (Ptuj). An obituary is also posted at the residents’ request. Special security measures We gave a lot of criticism or recommendations for improvement in connection with the use of special security measures (hereinafter: SSM) according to Article 29 of ZDZdr. The law defines these measures as urgent measures taken to facilitate the healing of an individual, or for correcting or controlling a person’s dangerous behaviour, whenever their life or the life of others is in danger, or when their health or the health of others is in grave threat, or which could cause great damage to personal property, and which behaviour could not be mitigated by other, less severe measures – the law only recognizes two forms, namely bodily restraint by belts or restriction of movement within one room. It also defines that SSM may (only) be used in wards under special supervision and in secure wards. When visiting institutions we received assurances that these types of measures are or have been used rarely, if ever. Moreover, these are only used in circumstances where the unavoidable need arises to control self-aggressive behaviour or violence toward others, or in the extreme unrest of a resident, or when using nasogastric probes and when administering infusions, so the resident would not remove the cannula(s). For thee purposes institutions most often fixate limbs and use lap belts. Here we should emphasise that in one of the cases a contracted medical expert especially stressed that, even though an institution might not have on hand segufix belts, which allow patients to be restrained according to professional guidelines, SSM can also be understood as immobilising extremities, for instance with bandages. The expert also made it clear that, depending on how fixation was performed, immobilising just one extremity can be a greater risk for an individual than obstructing all extremities and the torso, with the constant supervision of medical staff. We encountered a few cases where immobilisation lasted significantly longer than the allowed 4 hours (for instance 12!). We also had a lot of work with the problem of prior approval for SSM for an individual resident, lack of prior approval of actual implementation of such measures, or even not informing doctors about concrete uses of this sort. There are also cases where a doctor orders therapy and the implementation of a SSM over the telephone. NPM believes that, in this case, the doctor must inspect the resident without delay. If this is not the case, the question is raised on what basis the doctor decided on the necessity of implementing a SSM, or on the well-foundedness of its implementation. We would also like to emphasise that a priori approval of a measure for all future incidents regarding a certain resident and then ex post approval of an already filled out incident report does not fulfil legal requirements. The law does indeed stipulate that another expert worker at a social welfare institute may order a SSM, but the doctor must be informed about that immediately, who must without delay make a decision about the appropriateness of implementing this measure. The expert worker must make a written note of having informed a doctor, but we found that even this was not always the case. We should also not forget that the law explicitly states whom the doctor ordering such a measure must inform about the approval and implementation of SSM (paragraph 6 of Article 29 of ZDZdr). Although NPM realizes that in constant, every-day immobilisation, such notifications (of the director, the closest person, lawyer, representative, legal representative) can be a burden, we stress that a positive normative regulation should be respected and implemented, especially since some of the informed persons also have the possibility of recommending administrative control over the ordering and implementation of the SSM. In several instances we had to remind the institution that according to ZDZdr the use of SSM is not allowed outside of secure wards – i.e. not in increased supervision wards, and certainly not in various care wards. NPM’s opinion is that otherwise the institute is violating the resident’s right to freedom of movement. It was not rare that we were forced to alert an institute to the need of providing appropriate rooms for implementing SSM as well as ofconstant supervision of the resident (as it could be inferred, given the number of night staff, that this was impossible to ensure). As a result, our medical expert recommended either staff presence or the introduction of a video surveillance system. The law, however, determines that the person on whom the SSM is used must be supervised, their vital functions monitored, and they must be treated professionally for the duration of the SSM. This does not mean occasional supervision, performed every few hours, but it means constant supervision of the person immobilised. We also warned IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DUTIES AND POWERS OF THE NPM IN 2013 NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM UNDER THE OPTIONAL PROTOCOL TO THE UN CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT 51