Sponsor
This study was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) (grant: 5R01HD046345). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Published In
PLoS ONE
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-27-2014
Subjects
Group homes for children -- Evaluation, Well-being, Orphans -- Services for, Children -- Institutional care -- Psychological aspects
Abstract
Background: With more than 2 million children living in group homes, or "institutions", worldwide, the extent to which institution-based caregiving negatively affects development and wellbeing is a central question for international policymakers.
Methods: A two-stage random sampling methodology identified community representative samples of 1,357 institutional dwelling orphaned and separated children (OSC) and 1,480 family-dwelling OSC aged 6–12 from 5 low and middle income countries. Data were collected from children and their primary caregivers. Survey-analytic techniques and linear mixed effects models describe child wellbeing collected at baseline and at 36 months, including physical and emotional health, growth, cognitive development and memory, and the variation in outcomes between children, care settings, and study sites.
Findings: At 36-month follow-up, institution-dwelling OSC had statistically significantly higher height-for-age Z-scores and better caregiver-reported physical health; family-dwelling OSC had fewer caregiver-reported emotional difficulties. There were no statistically significant differences between the two groups on other measures. At both baseline and follow-up, the magnitude of the differences between the institution- and family-dwelling groups was small. Relatively little variation in outcomes was attributable to differences between sites (11–27% of total variation) or care settings within sites (8–14%), with most variation attributable to differences between children within settings (60–75%). The percent of variation in outcomes attributable to the care setting type, institution- versus family-based care, ranged from 0–4% at baseline, 0–3% at 36-month follow-up, and 0–4% for changes between baseline and 36 months.
Interpretation: These findings contradict the hypothesis that group home placement universally adversely affects child wellbeing. Without substantial improvements in and support for family settings, the removal of institutions, broadly defined, would not significantly improve child wellbeing and could worsen outcomes of children who are moved from a setting where they are doing relatively well to a more deprived setting.
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0104872
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/16348
Citation Details
Whetten K, Ostermann J, Pence BW, Whetten RA, Messer LC, et al. (2014) Three-Year Change in the Wellbeing of Orphaned and Separated Children in Institutional and Family-Based Care Settings in Five Low- and Middle-Income Countries. PLoS ONE 9(8): e104872. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0104872
Description
This is the publisher's final PDF. © 2014 Whetten et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.