PDF《Residential Centers in炉he?1990s》

s developmental needs except for the need for long-term relationships with consistent caregivers (Gunnar, 2001). Regarding such relationships, it was proposed that quality institutions could provide stable and consistent caregiving, yet there would still be deprivation of a regular family life embedded in a regular social envi- ronment (van IJzendoorn et?al., 2011). Even though Gunnar'

s model of the develop- mental needs of institutionalized children and, subsequently, the three levels of institutional privation have merit, they do not present all needs or challenges expe- rienced by institutionalized children.Additionally, Gil (1982) expands the origins of the institutional maltreatment of children to the social system in its entirety and defines it as involving … any system, programme, policy or procedure or individ- ual interaction with a child in placement that abuses, neglects or is detrimental to the child'

s health, safety or emotional and physical well-being, or in any way exploits or violates the child'

s basic rights (p.?458).

29 In the 1990s, Romania had a negative reputation abroad for how children were cared for in long-term residential institutions, and shocking images presented in the media highlighted serious neglect of their needs. The consequences of neglect on children'

s development were highlighted in scientific literature as well, especially through the study of children adopted from Romanian care institutions in the early 1990s (Ames &

Carter, 1992;

Groze &

Ileana, 1996;

Johnson et?al., 1992). However, by

1999 there were not any empirical studies that measured children'

s quality of life in Romanian institutions. Consequently, in this chapter we present: 1. Relatively recent studies of international institutional neglect 2. Background about the caregiving context in Romania 3. Data collected during the cross-sectional Survey on Child Abuse in Residential Care Institutions in Romania (SCARCIR;

Stativa,Anghelescu, Palicari, Stanescu, &

Nanu, 2002), which helped to design a scale to evaluate institutionalized chil- dren'

s rearing conditions in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC;

UN General Assembly, 1989) 4. The extent of how well children'

s rights were upheld within four types of Romanian long-term residential centers in late 1990s (i.e., nurseries, centers for preschool, school-aged, and severely handicapped/disabled children) 1.1? Institutional Neglect 1.1.1? International Empirical Assessments of?the?Quality of?Institutional?Care Even though various studies have tried to provide a description of children'

s life in residential care institutions, as a heterogeneous phenomenon, institutional neglect incorporates different facets making it quite difficult to define conceptually and to measure. However, relatively recent attempts were made to empirically measure institutional rearing conditions, following different theoretical approaches in vari- ous places and showing variability in the quality of institutional settings when com- pared with family environments. As anticipated, some relatively recent empirical assessments of children'

s rear- ing, including their physical and relational environment, showed that institutions had lower-quality conditions than family settings in countries like Romania, Greece, and Ukraine (Dobrova-Krol, van IJzendoorn, Bakermans-Kranenburg, &

Juffer, 2010;

Smyke et?al., 2007;

Vorria et?al., 2003). A similar picture was offered by Groark and colleagues (Groark, McCall, &