effects of institutionalisation

effects of institutionalisation

1. Romanian orphan studies

   • used to study the effects of deprivation
   • in Romania if women have multiple children and can't afford the children are sent to orphanages with poor conditions
   • 1989- revoloution as some orphans were adopted by british parents

2. rutter (2011) English and Romanian Adoptee study

   • observed the extent of good care could make up for poor exerpeince in institutions in 165 romanian orphans in Britain
   • cognitive, physical and emotional development was assessed at ages 4,6,11,15
   • control group- group of 52 British children adopted at the same time
   • showed signs of delayed intellectual development and malnutrition
     • differential rates of recovery related to the age of adoption
   • mean IQ = 6 months = 102 and 2 years= 77
     • differences remain at age 16
     • children adopted after 6 months developed disinhibited atatchment
       • attention seeking, clinginess, social behaviour directed towards all adults

3. the Bucharest Early intervention project Zeanah et all 2005

   • assessed attachment in 95 children 12-31 months who spent their lives in institutions and measured using strange situation
     • control group- 50 children who didn't experienced institutionalisation
   • carers were asked about unusual social behaviour (disinhibited attachment
   • 74% of control group and 19% of ins group were securely attached
     • 65% were classified with disorganised attachment

4. disinhibited attachment

   • typical effect of spending time in an institution
   • equally friendly towards familiar and unfamiliar people
   • rutter 2006- adaption to living with multiple caregivers during the sensitive period for attachment formation
     • child may have 50 carers but don't see them enough to form a secure attachment

5. mental retardation

   • in rutter's study some of the children showed signs of retardation
     • most adopted before 6 months caught with control group at age 4
   • damage to intellectual development as a result of institutionalisation can be recovered if adoption takes place before 6 months

6. evaluation

   • real life application
     • improved the understanding of the effects of institutionalisation and the way children are cared for in institutions by avoiding large numbers and having key workers to allow the children to develop normal attachments. shows research has been useful in practical terms
   • fewer extraneous variables than other orphan studies
     • children experienced loss and trauma before institutionalised so it would be hard to observe effects of institution as they would be dealing with multiple factors. with romanian orphans its possible to study institutionalisation without confounding variables which then increases the validity
   • the romanian orphanages weren't typical
     • the results were so bad the result cant be applied to understanding the impact of better quality institutional care or situations where children experienced depriavtion. in the orphanages the poor standards of acre when forming relationships lead to low levels of intellectual development. because of these situational variables the data lacks generalisability
   • ethical issues
     • there are mothodoligical issues as the orphans werent randomly assigned to conditions and so is a confounding variable as children adopted earlier may have been more sociable. another investigation into fostering vs institutional care that did use random allocation. BEIP romanian orphans were randomly allocated to either institutional care or fostering. this removes the confounding variables but introduces ethical problems