Harm Caused by Institutionalisation- Short Version

When I was helping to put the written material together for the Immersive Simulation Lab: Family-Based Care Conference last month, writing parts for the conference pack, for press releases and so on, I was asked to give a very short version of how institutional care is harmful to children. This was followed with the reassurance that I could just copy something from my website or blogs. It sounded like good advice, except that when I started to look for a few paragraphs to borrow, I discovered that I have not written a blog-size version of the general overview yet. So I guess it is high time to change that. Here is my attempt:

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Bucharest Early Intervention Project

On the last day of the DI conference in Sofia, last month, we were treated to an amazing presentation by the three researchers who set up and are running the Bucharest Early Intervention Project. This is a longitudinal study done in Romania to compare the outcomes for 136 children who were placed in an institution and of whom half stayed in the institution – as they would have if the research project had not taken place – and half were placed in high quality foster care, set up by the research team. And in addition 72 children who grew up in their own families, having never been placed in care, were followed as a comparison group.

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