institutionalisation

Question 1

institutions

Answer 1

An institution is a place dedicated to a particular task such as looking after children awaiting adoption, looking after hospital patients or caring for the mentally ill
In the past many institutions had little emotional care and strict rules as the Romanian ones from the 1990s in which children where confined to cribs and little cognitive or emotional stimulation.

Question 2

English and Romanian orphans (ERA) study method

Answer 2

In the 1990s 165 Romanian children wo spent their early lives in institutions went to the uk. They all fell under 3 groups in terms of age
54 adopted before 6 months
57 adopted between 6 months and 2 years
54 adopted between the ages of 2-4 years
They where tested at regular intervals (4,6,11 and 15 years of age) and physical, cognitive and social development was measured.
This progress was compared to a group of 52 uk orphans adopted before 6 months.

Question 3

English and Romanian orphans (ERA) study findings

Answer 3

The Romanian orphans lagged behind the uk orphans in all 3 types of development at the time of adoption, most of them where severely malnourished and showed signs of mental retardation.
By the age of 4 however some of the Romanian children had caught up mainly the ones adopted before 6 months.
The ones adopted after 6 months were more likely to suffer cognitive, social and emotional defects for example the longer the child spent in the institution the more likely they where to have an lower then average IQ and the groups after 6 months where more likely to have mental health issues such as disinhibited attachment which is when they treated all adults the same in terms of friendliness and social behavior familiar or strange.
Rutter suggested this was because in institutions a child might have up to 50 carers who they don’t see enough to form secure attachments.

Institutional care does not mean the infant wont recover especially those adopted before 6 months but if the institution has appalling conditions like the Romanian ones had there can be long term consequences for the children but the study’s show these effects can be minimized.

Question 4

English and Romanian orphans (ERA) study evaluation

Answer 4

• ) The study did not know the conditions of all the Romanian orphanages before the children entered the uk
• ) The orphan children did not give consent, this has ethical issues
• ) Only some of the children received detailed clinical investigations so it is hard to generalise the findings
• ) The experiment was natural so there may have been extraneous variables which could effect findings such as the quality of care from adopted parents.

Question 5

Other Romanian orphan studies

Answer 5

Le mare study- In Canada a longitudinal study looking at 36 orphans looked at their physical growth and health and found while at age 4 and a half the orphans where physically smaller then the control group this difference had disappeared by age eleven.

Question 6

effects of instituionalisation

Answer 6

Physical underdevopment-usually physically smaller then other children their age this is due to lack of emotional care rather then poor nourishment and has been called development dwarvism

intellectually underfunctioning- The cognitive development is also effected by emotional deprivation leading to lower scores on intelligence tests but when given emotional care the IQ scores rose as much as 30 points

poor parenting- A group of 50 women who had been raised in institutions compared to a control group struggled more to become good parents with many of their children spending time in care

Disinhibited attachment-Children don’t discriminate between attachment figures and can be attention seeking and show over friendliness to strangers