Vienna to publish disputed Auszeit-WG concept

Vienna Education Councillor and Deputy Mayor Bettina Emmerling will soon publish the full concept for the disputed Auszeit-WG facility, ORF reported. She also said measures to protect children from heat in the city’s kindergartens and schools would be accelerated.

“It is no secret what is being done there,” Emmerling said in an interview with ORF’s Wien heute. A 17-page paper from the facility’s operator has so far been the only publicly available document. Experts have sharply criticised it, with child and adolescent psychiatrist Patrick Frottier describing it as having “serious professional shortcomings”.

Emmerling again defended the Auszeit-WG as an “ultima ratio” to be used only after all other measures had been exhausted. She said much of the expert criticism was based on the ideological view that children should not be confined.

“I see it very differently because we are dealing with repeat offenders who have committed several hundred crimes, and we have no other option,” Emmerling said.

She said planning for what would happen after a child’s stay had to begin on the first day. Children should not be expected to be “cured” after six or 12 weeks and then risk returning to the same structures, she said. The aim was to determine how they could be helped before they turned 14, which Emmerling described as the “predetermined path” to prison.

The facility’s legal basis has also drawn criticism. Emmerling said it was currently covered by the Heimaufenthaltsgesetz, or Home Residence Act, and was not on an uncertain legal footing. However, she called the situation complicated and again urged the Justice Ministry to create a uniform legal framework across Austria.

Heat protection in schools and kindergartens was another major topic of the interview. Emmerling said the summer heatwave had shown that measures needed to be implemented more quickly. It should not be expected that teachers and pupils could work, learn and concentrate in conditions where the heat made that impossible, she said.

As an initial measure, schools will be able to use mobile air-conditioning units and fans more easily from the next school year, according to Emmerling. New and fully renovated school buildings have already incorporated measures including geothermal energy, building-component activation for cooling, greenery and external blinds. She said the main challenge was existing buildings, which needed to be retrofitted.

Districts are responsible for maintaining school buildings, Emmerling said. While most invest substantially in school construction, some do not consider it a priority.

Vienna also began testing mobile air-conditioning units in municipal kindergartens this summer. Fourteen pilot locations have been equipped, and the programme will continue, Emmerling said.