Effects of Institutional Care

Institutionalising children has been shown to cause a wide range of problems for their development, well-being and longer-term outcomes. Institutional care does not adequately provide the level of positive individual attention from consistent caregivers which is essential for the successful emotional, physical, mental, and social development of children. This is profoundly relevant for children under 3 years of age for whom institutional care has been shown to be especially damaging.

Common issues for children in institutional care are a significantly increased risk of sexual and physical abuse, a lack of stimulation, and harsh discipline. Children in institutions are less likely to attend school, and are frequently isolated from their traditional communities. Long periods in an institution make it harder for a child to assimilate back into a family and community, and deny them access to the life-long attachments and community support systems that family relationships and communities can provide. For funders and implementing bodies, care in the community is a significantly more effective and sustainable use of resources since it avoids the high maintenance costs of institutions, and prevents many of the problems posed by institutional care.

It is widely accepted that institutions should be used as a last resort only. Countries which have traditionally relied on institutional care are now transforming their institutions into small family style group homes and actively pursuing preferences for community-based care options based around small family style units. This policy shift is urgently required in HIV/AIDS affected countries which are taking a backward step in resorting to the use of institutions to care for children orphaned or affected by the disease.

The body of literature contained in this section provides in-depth explanations of the damaging effects of institutionalisation on children and provides recommendations for alterative community care options.

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Institutional Neglect in Romania’s Long-Term Residential Centers in the 1990s from the Perspective of Children’s Rights

Ecaterina Stativa, Adrian V. Rus, Sheri R. Parris, Jacquelyn S. Pennings, Oana Clocotici - Child Maltreatment in Residential Care, 03 Aug 2017

This study presents the findings from a secondary analysis of data collected in 1999, which focused on child abuse and neglect within long-term residential centers in Romania, from a child rights perspective.

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An Introduction to Maltreatment of Institutionalized Children

Adrian V. Rus et al. - Child Maltreatment in Residential Care, 03 Aug 2017

This chapter serves as an introduction to the book Child Maltreatment in Residential Care and provides a brief overview of the research on child maltreatment within the context of institutional care.

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Official Committee Hansard, Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade: Adopting a modern slavery act in Australia

Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade - Commonwealth of Australia, 02 Aug 2017

This document includes the full transcript of the public hearings of the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry in preparation for a Modern Slavery Act.

Assessing Parental Fitness and Care for Unaccompanied Children

Lauren Heidbrink - The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 12 Jul 2017

Based on a three-year, multi-sited ethnography with unaccompanied migrant children and their families, this paper investigates how U.S. institutional policies of immigration detention and family reunification impact migrant children and their families.

Language and psychosocial skills of Greek institutionalized children

Ralli M. Asimina, Schiza Melpomen, Tsiatsiou Alexandra, 10 Jul 2017

This study examined language and psychosocial skills of Greek institutionalized children in comparison to children of the same age brought up in family-based care.

language and psychosocial skills of Greek institutionalized children in comparis

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Ending the criminalisation of children in residential care: Briefing one

The Howard League, 10 Jul 2017

This briefing the first in a series describing a programme of the Howard League for Penal Reform, which is intended to clarify why so many children in residential care in England and Wales are being criminalised at higher rates than their peers and identify examples of best practice to prevent their unnecessary criminalisation.

Trafficking into alternative care

Kate van Doore - Griffith University Law School, Forget Me Not, 05 Jul 2017

In this video, Kate van Doore describes the process of 'paper orphaning,' a term coined to characterize how children are recruited and trafficked into orphanages to gain profits through international funding and orphanage tourism.

School Functioning of a Particularly Vulnerable Group: Children and Young People in Residential Child Care

Carla González-García, Susana Lázaro-Visa, Iriana Santos, Jorge F. del Valle, and Amaia Bravo - Frontiers in Psychology, 04 Jul 2017

This study describes the school functioning of a sample of 1,216 children aged between 8 and 18 living in residential child care in Spain. Results have important implications for the design of socio-educative intervention strategies in both education and child care systems in order to promote better school achievement and better educational qualifications in this vulnerable group.

The mechanisms of protection factors in operation in the case of teenagers living in Romanian placement centres

Ovidiu Bunea, Ancuta Bojian, Daniela Cojocaru - Revista de cercetare şi intervenţie socială, 01 Jul 2017

The aim of this study was to identify the processes that support the good results obtained by the teenagers and young persons who reside in the largest residential centre in the county of Iași, Romania and their concerns regarding the future.