Socio-emotional development in children in residential care

Although residential care offers young children protection from family abuse and neglect, its negative consequences are well known. Institutional contexts do not promote children’s recovery from past experiences just like... [ view full abstract ]

Although residential care offers young children protection from family abuse and neglect, its negative consequences are well known. Institutional contexts do not promote children’s recovery from past experiences just like family alternatives do. The main goal of this longitudinal study was to analyze the continuity of mental representations of attachment and the social adjustment over time in children in Spanish residential units, comparing them with a control sample of children without adversity and institutionalization.
The sample consisted of 50 children who were living in residential settings in Spain and who were first studied when they were between 4 and 8 years of age. They were studied again at age 8-13 years. This group was compared with a group of 58 children living with their intact birth families and with no experience of maltreatment or separation (control group). The Story Stem Assessment Profile (SSAP; Hodges, Steele, Hillman & Henderson, 2003) was administered to explore children´s representations of attachment relationships. Social adjustment was analyzed with The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997).
The findings indicated that the children in residential care showed less security and more insecurity, avoidance and disorganization than the control children. Moreover, they showed more behavioral problems than children from the control group. Four years later, many difficulties in the socio-emotional development of these children were still present and a good amount of differences with the control group remained significant. The socio-emotional difficulties of the children in residential care appear to be very static and the institutional context seems not to be adequate to promote a complete socio-emotional recovery after early adversity.