1. There was research several years back that came to the conclusion that "institutional" care of children had a maximum benefit period of two years. After that it said, the benefit experienced a "drop off" effect and there was a slow down in development against chronological age.
There seem to be a trend to sentence young people to very long terms of residential programmes of diversion within the institutional setting of, say,a Youth Centre.
Is it possible that the diversion programme itself will have a developmental growth effect that will overcome the apparent negative effect of long term "institutionalisation".
2. Bowlby's research showed that there were long term detremental effects of maternal deprivation A child had need of a an attachment figure to allow for good enough long- term affectional bonding. Rutter later re-assessed Bowlby's findings and concluded that children can develop good enough affectional bonding behaviours even if they had multiple care givers. 5 - or even up to 11 !!!
Really?? Because this give support to the use of staff rotations and shift systems. What do we know about this in Africa?
3. In Anna Freud et al book "Beyond the Best Interests of the Child" the idea is put forward that we have to think ethically when the decision is made to separate child from parent and use a residential setting for care. The criteria for making this judgement is said to be the concept of " irrevocable harm " . Using this criteria for placement outside of the parent means that it has to be established if the child were to stay in the care of the parent and in the conditions attached to the parental situation, the child would suffer harm that was irrecoverable. It seems that it would need the application of, and a high regard for professional opinion.and professional judgement before making a placement decision..
Are we making ethical decisions around the placement of children in South Africa and in Africa?
No comments:
Post a Comment