Effects of institutionalisation

• Institutionalisation

  The effects of living in an institutional setting outside the family home- children’s attachment and development
• institution

  a hospital or orphanage
• orphan study

  research concerning children placed into care
• mental retardation

  cognitive development that is below the average level
• disorganised attachment

  children who show a mix of insecure-resistant and insecure-avoidant behaviours and can’t organise their emotional responses
• disinhibited attachment

  Characterised by a child acting equally friendly to people they know and don’t know
• key worker

  important individuals who work with children in institutions
• attrition

  when a group gets smaller due to participants dropping out
• evaluation of Goldfarb

  • only studied children from one institution which was unstimuLating and the youngest children were kept in isolation- effects of this institution may not be true for all
  • strong element of individual differences- could be differences between intelligence, sociability and personality that led to the later differences like fostering
• Tizard and Hodges

  • studied children in instructional care for the first 4 months
  • they were privated as they didn’t have former attachments
  • high staff turnover and the institutes policy of carers not forming relationships with children prevented attachment
  • there was a control group raised in their normal homes
  • the children were assessed age 4, 8 and 16
• Tizard and Hodges results

  • institution children had no strong attachments and problems relating to peers
  • adopted children formed strong attachments with adoptive families but had problems with relationships outside family
  • restored children had poor family and peer relationships and behaviour problems
  • this suggests institution care had long-lasting negative effects
• Tizard and Hodges evaluation

  • more socially skilled children could have been adopted and found it easier to form attachments within their adoptive families
  • Study suffered from atypical sample attrition where a certain type of participants drops out affecting reliability
  • Longitudinal study so there was a drop out rate- those who continued took part in later assessments causing bias
  • The factor of why children were in institution wasn’t controlled for- issues the child had when institutionalised would continue later
  • Some could be adopted by loving families
  • shows privation is long lasting