Institutional Care, Foster Home Care or Family Care?

Abstract

Three case histories and an account of an epidemic in a home have highlighted a few of the physical, social and mental problems encountered by motherless babies in their different environmental settings. The institutionalized child may have a normal physical development, but becomes mentally retarded because of lack of social stimulation and individual attention. On the other hand, a motherless baby reared in an environment with poor sanitation and inadequate diet may have poor physical but normal mental development. The study also showed that a child can have normal mental, social and physical development if the right choice of foster parent is made. It is also revealed that long-term, successful foster-home placement does not automatically lead to adoption, and feelings of frustration can arise from regarding a foster-home child as one's own without the legal support usually provided in the Adoption Laws. As demonstrated by the epidemic described in this study, the course of a disease can be explosive in an institutional setting. This can be related to the quality of staff who have no knowledge or training in the causes of and modes of transmission of disease.