The Difficulties Of Raising An Institutionalized Child

Institutionalized Children are children living in orphans, fosters homes, juvenile halls, a mental facility and more. Institutions for adolescents are quite common; the estimated amount of vulnerable children being raised in these institutions around the world are about 8 million. The primary reason why there is a great deal of children in institutions are due to financial problems. These families are struggling with poverty cannot afford to feed their children, send them to school, and overall are not able to support the difficulties that comes with raising a child. Another reason are that the children have disabilities, such as being born with a mental illness. The parents are unable to care for their children because they have little to
An institution’s group size tend to be large; each group varies from 9-16 children, but in extreme cases, the number of children can go up to 70. The ratio of a caregiver and children are approximately 8:1 to 31:1. Because there’s such a small amount of caregivers compared to the children, it makes it difficult for the children to feel connected with the adults in the institution. This can result in a decreases in developmental growth for the children. Alongside, these children tend to see their caregivers and other adults come and go in their life due to high staff turnover, the caregivers are being allowed to consistently assign themselves to the same group, and their are constantly medical and behavioral specialists, adoptive parents, and volunteers that come and go. There is no stable and consistent adult in these children’s life so therefore the children never have a dependable figure. The children would not have someone who genuinely cares for them and who can be there for them when they are in need of emotional support and comfort. Since the caregiver is only there to clean, feed, and change the children, they are more focused on health issues instead of social interaction. The lack of nurture for the children contributes to the high rates of development issues that many institutionalized children have growing
Because they are isolated and have minimal interactions with their caregiver, this will cause a set back in the child’s development. Some important areas of growth that children in a normal household should progress into are physical, social, cognitive, and emotional development. Research shows that the longer one stays in an institution will cause the child to have a lack-age growth. The negative effect and stress of a child living in an institution can be long term because most of the development of a person begins at their