The effects of institutionalisation

• Institution refers to the place like a hospital or orphanage where children live for a long, continuous period of time
• There is often little emotional care provided in institutions and often have poor conditions, basic physical care and there’s little opportunity to form attachments
• Institutionalisation may result in privation, a complete absence of attachments due to the lack of an appropriate attachment figure. Privation is likely to lead to permanent emotional damage
• Gardner (1972) showed that lack of emotional care, rather than poor nourishment, is the cause of what has been called ‘deprivation dwarfism’
• Skodak and Skeels (1949) studied children placed in institutions and found that these children scored poorly on intelligence tests. However, when the same children were transferred to a different institution where some inmates gave the children emotional care, their IQ scores improved by almost 30 points
• Hodges and Tizard (1989) assessed 65 infants who had been institutionalised before they were 4 months old. The children were assessed at ages 4, 8 and 16 on measures of emotional and social competence. Those who were still in the institution at the age of 2 showed disinhibited attachment
• Quinton et al (1984) compared a group of 50 women raised in children’s homes, with a control group of 59 women raised with their families. when the women were in their 20s it was found that the ex-institutionalised women were experiencing extreme difficulties acting as parents
• Romanias orphan problem began in 1966, under the communist rule of Nicolae Ceausescu which tried to boost Romania's population by encouraging parents to have large families and banning abortion, as well as denied access to contraception. This occurred at a time of severe food and energy shortages
• Many Romanians couldn’t afford To care for their families and therefore abandoned their newborn children, leaving thousands to suffer at under-funded, state run orphanages
• When the regime collapsed in 1989, the western world became aware of the children in institutional care in Romania
• The English and Romanian Adoption (ERA) study is an on-going longitudinal study being carried out by Rutter and Sonug-Barke which aims to compare Romanian orphans adopted by UK families, with UK born adoptees, to try further understand the effects of institutionalisation on development
• The sample consisted of 165 Romanian children who were physically, cognitively and emotionally assessed. Over half the of the Romanian children showed evidence of severe malnutrition and they were in the bottom third of the population for height and head size. Those who were about 6 months at this point were found to have below average IQ scored for their age
• At the age of 4: those adopted before 6 months old showed an increased in their IQ from 63 to 107. those adopted after 6 months did less well, increasing to an average of 90. they also did less well in terms of physical development
• At the age of 6: Rutter found some of the children had evidence of disinhibited attachment, showing overfriendliness and clinginess as well as attention seeking behaviours. They also showed a lack of differentiation between adults
• Disinhibited attachment was most common in the late adopted Romanian group (26.1%). in the early adopted Romanian group, 8.9% showed disinhibited attachment
• Disinhibited attachment appeared to be more likely in children who had experienced longer periods in institutions
• At the age of 11: of those children who displayed a disinhibited attachment at the age of 6, this still persisted 5 years later in 54% of children at age 11. One third of the children had recovered well from their time in the institution
• Effects of early privation and institutionalisation aren’t necessarily permanent and can be overcome by good subsequent care
• The effects of privation appear to have no lasting effects if children are adopted into good homes before 6 months of age. Problems may persist in children adopted after 6 months of age