Effects on institutionalisation Flashcards
Adoption
to take on legal responsibilities as a parent of a child that is not ones biological child
Institutionalisation
a place like a hospital or orphanage where children live for long, continuous periods of time
Deprivation
the child has an attachment figure during critical period, but loses this - could be long term or short term
* e.g. long term foster care, short term hospitalisation
Privation
infant has never formed an attachment in the critical period
* e.g. death of a mother at child birth or orphaned
Rutter (2011)
Aim- to see if the experience of privation could be overcome by sensitive care following adoption
* 165 Romanian orphans were adopted into British families
* children were placed into institutions before being adopted
* Rutter studied 3 groups of children:
1. adopted before the age of 6 months
2. adopted between 6 months and 2 years
3. adopted after the age of 2
* children were monitored at ages 4,6,11 and 15
* by the age of 6, children were making good recoveries
* however, those adopted later (older than 2) had a much higher level of disinhibited attachment (attention seeking, clingyness, poor social behaviour)
* those adopted befre 6 months rarely displayed disinhibited attachment
* monitoring was through parent and teacher reports and home visits
* supports the view that theres a sensitive period in the developments of attachments
* a failure to form attachments during critical period can have long -lasting effects
Bucharest Early Intervention Project (2005)
- 95 children in institutional care were compared to 50 children who had never lived in institutions
- attachment types were measured using the strange situation study
- 74% of the control group came out as securely attached compared to 19% of the institutional group
reasons for statistics: - lack of consistency in the keyworker assigned to children in orphanages. this prevents children from developing secure relationships
- theres only one key worker for many children, so they might not be able to meet the needs of everyone
Evaluation
- Ignores long term needs
+ Use of different methods
- Correlational research
+ Real world application
- Bad conditions
- Ignores long term needs
- research into romainian orphans has not followed long terms effects
- majority have only followed up the adopted orphans into their mid-teens
- more recent studies have followed some individuals into their mid-20s
- this is a problem because the long term effects and recovery in the 20s are not monitored or understood
- it may be that children who spent longer in institutions may lack intellectual development
+ Use of different methods
- research into institutionalisation uses a wide range of methods
- these include, semi-structured interviews, observations and teacher reports
- different methods provide rich, detailed pictures of adoptees functioning in different areas of their social world
- Correlational research
- research into the effects of adoption and behavioural problems is correlational
- theres a negative correlation between adoption and intellectual and behavioural development
- however, there may be other underlying factors that could explain this link
- research does not imply cause and effect
+ Real world application
- research into institutionalisation has useful real life application
- Studying Romainian orphans has enhanced our understanding of the effects of institutionalisation
- this has led to improvements in the way children are cared for in institutions
- e.g. childrens homes now have similar number of caregivers for each child e.g. keyworker
- having a keyworker means that children have a chance to develop normal attachments
- this shows that research has been immensely valuable
Bad conditions
- a problem with Romainian orphans research is that the conditions were so bad that the results cannot be compared to better quality institutional care
- this means that the results of the study cannot be generalised to all institutions
- there’s a lack of internal validity
