Zusammenfassung der Ressource
3.10 Effects of Institutionalisation
- Institutionalisation is the behaviour patterns of
children who had been raised outside of a family
home in care.
- Rutter (1998)
- Procedure: Studied Romanian orphans who has been placed in orphanages aged 1-2 weeks old,
with minimal adult contact. Assessed a group of around 100 orphans at ages 4,6,11 then
reassessed 21 years later. 3 conditions used, adopted before 6 months, adopted between
6months and 2 years, and adopted between 2-4 years.
- Findings: At first arrival, adoptees showed signs
of delayed intellectual development and severe
malnourishment. Mean IQ for those before 6
months was 102, 86 after 6 months and 77 for
those after 2 years.
- In Romania in the 1990s the president of
the time made it a requirement for women
to have 5 children, leading to high intakes
in orphanages as people could not afford to
care for these children.
- Effects:
- Disinhibited attachment: An adaptation to
living in care with multiple carers.
- Intellectual disability: Lower iq, those
adopted before 6 months however were able
to catch up with the control group.
- Bucharest Early Intervention Project
- Procedure: Zeanah et al (2005) assessed the attachment in 136
orphans between 12-31 months who had spent on average 90% of
their life in an institution. Measured using the strange situation.
- Findings: Only 19% of the control
group was securely attached. 65%
found to have a disorganised
attachment, a type of insecure where
children display an inconsistent
pattern of behaviour.
- Evaluation:
- Strengths:
- Real world application. Studying Romanian
orphans can improve understanding of
institutional care and how to prevent worse
effects.
- Lack of confounding variables. Children from Romanian
orphanages have been placed there by loving parents so
lack of previous negative experience which could affect
it,
- Weaknesses:
- Lack of adult data. There will
be some time until we know
the long term effects.
- Results may not be representative. Once
children were adopted they may not wish to
take part in the study.