Institutional Care

Institutional Care

1. Due to certain early experiences in childhood, e.g. family breakdown.

2. Some children end up spending time in institutional care

3. This can include children's homes or orphanages

4. Children raised in institutions often display signs of emotional privation

   • This means that the children have recieved a good standard of physical care but have not formed an attachment with a caregiver

5. Tizard and Hodges

   • Aim: To examine long term effects of emotional privation on children who were brought up in a children's home until they were at least 4 years old
   • Method
     • 65 children were raised in a home where the physical care was food but staff were discouraged from forming attachment to the children
     • By the time children were 2 years old they had on average 24 carers
     • At the age of 4 , 25 of the children restored to their birth parents
       • 33 were adopted
       • 7 remained in care
       • Some children were followed up at ages 8-16
   • Results:
     • At age 8 and 16 , the majority of the resorted children (over 80%) generally had good attachments to their parents and close family relationships
     • Whereas this was true for only around half of the adopted children
     • Both the restored and adopted children struggled with relationships with peers and were less likely to have a best friend
   • Conclusion: Children can form attachments when placed with a family who can give them lots of care and attention after the leave the instituiton
   • Evaluation
     • Strengths
       • High ecological validity because it was a natural experiment
         • Real children suffering from emotional privation in a children's home were followed to see if they developed an attachment once they have left instituitanal care
         • Therefore the results reflect the real world and the children's natural reactions to events in their lives
       • Longitudinal study
         • Children's progress was followed from when they were less than 4 months until they were 16
           • Therefore you can investigate the long term effects of emotional privation on the attachment behaviour of the children who have been in institutional care
     • Weaknesses
       • Participants dropped out of the study
         • 65 were originally studied, however only 51 were studied at age of 8
           • Therefore those who were less well adjusted could have dropped out leaving the study with a biased sample. Its's therefore not appropriate to generalise the findings
       • Natural experiment
         • Researcher had little control over variables
         • Due to the lack of control its difficult to determine what causes the children to form an attachment
         • There could be several other extraneous variables that influenced the attachment to form. E.g those who were adopted may have been more socially skilled and therefore better to form relationships with their adoptive parents

6. Rutter et al

   • Aim: To compare disinhibited attachment behaviour in Romanian orphans and UK born adoptees
   • Method
     • 2 groups of children followed over 11 years to see if they displayed disinhibited attachment behaviour
     • Group 1- UK born adoptees place with UK families before 6 months of age
     • Group 2 - Romanian orphans who entered the orphanage between 1 and 2 weeks old who were later adopted by UK families. 58 babies adopted before 5 months of age and 59 adopted between 6 and 24 months of age
   • Results
     • UK adoptees- have a marked disinhibition - 2 (3.8%)
     • Romanian adopted less than 6 months- have a marked disinhibition - 4 (8.9%)
     • Romanian adopted 6-24 months- have a marked disinhibition - 23 (26.1%)
       • Long term effects
         • 54% of the Romanian children who showed mild or marked disinhibited attachment at the age of 6 still showed a disinhibited attachment aged 11
   • Evaluation
     • Strengths
       • High ecological Validity- natural experiment
         • Real children suffering from physical and emotional privation in a Romanian orphanage were compared with UK born adoptees
           • Therefore the results reflect the real world and children's natural reactions to events in their lives
     • Weaknesses
       • Natural experiment
         • Little controls over variables
           • Due to lack of control it's difficult to determine what causes the children to display disinhibited behaviour
             • There could be other extraneous variables that influence this type of attachment
               • Therefore its difficult to generalise the results to other children who have experienced institutional care