3.10 Effects of Institutionalisation

3.10 Effects of Institutionalisation

1. Institutionalisation is the behaviour patterns of children who had been raised outside of a family home in care.

2. Rutter (1998)

   • Procedure: Studied Romanian orphans who has been placed in orphanages aged 1-2 weeks old, with minimal adult contact. Assessed a group of around 100 orphans at ages 4,6,11 then reassessed 21 years later. 3 conditions used, adopted before 6 months, adopted between 6months and 2 years, and adopted between 2-4 years.
   • Findings: At first arrival, adoptees showed signs of delayed intellectual development and severe malnourishment. Mean IQ for those before 6 months was 102, 86 after 6 months and 77 for those after 2 years.

3. In Romania in the 1990s the president of the time made it a requirement for women to have 5 children, leading to high intakes in orphanages as people could not afford to care for these children.

4. Effects:

   • Disinhibited attachment: An adaptation to living in care with multiple carers.
   • Intellectual disability: Lower iq, those adopted before 6 months however were able to catch up with the control group.

5. Bucharest Early Intervention Project

   • Procedure: Zeanah et al (2005) assessed the attachment in 136 orphans between 12-31 months who had spent on average 90% of their life in an institution. Measured using the strange situation.
   • Findings: Only 19% of the control group was securely attached. 65% found to have a disorganised attachment, a type of insecure where children display an inconsistent pattern of behaviour.

6. Evaluation:

   • Strengths:
     • Real world application. Studying Romanian orphans can improve understanding of institutional care and how to prevent worse effects.
     • Lack of confounding variables. Children from Romanian orphanages have been placed there by loving parents so lack of previous negative experience which could affect it,
   • Weaknesses:
     • Lack of adult data. There will be some time until we know the long term effects.
     • Results may not be representative. Once children were adopted they may not wish to take part in the study.