evaluation

• RWA- Research helps authorities to improve the conditions for children growing up outside of the family home, eg childrens homes avoid having large numbers of caregivers in presence, instead they have much fewer caregivers who provide emotional care
• Has led to foster care and adoption being encouraged where possible instead of institutional care- institutional care now deemed undesirable due to these studies
• A lack of confounding variables- before these 2 studies, previous orphan studies used orphans who had experienced degrees of trauma eg war orphans,
• However, studies from Romanian orphanages may have introduced other confounding variables- remarkably poor conditions within the orphanages, very little intellectual stimulation, very little emotional care, very little comfort- effects of institutionalization may in fact be the effects of poor institutional care than institutional care as a factor in general
• Socially sensitive research- the results from the research have been published while the orphans are growing up, results show that late adopted children typically have poor developmental outcomes- could result in low self-esteem for these children alongside low expectations