'THE CHILD WHO HAS LIVED IN INSTITUTIONS. EFFECTS ON HIS DEVELOPMENT"

Conference given by Carmen Amorós, clinical psychologist.

Among the various activities carried out in Barcelona by ADDIA during 1997 there was the conference on the various aspects related to the institutionalization of children. Carmen Amorós A., clinical psychologist with experience in the field, was the person responsible for establishing the required dialogue with the parents participating in the conference and orientating them in relation to how institutionalization in early childhood may have an effect on the child's development.
>From the beginning of the Conference, Carmen Amorós made it clear that the experience of institutionalization depends on the functioning of each specific institution, on the people of reference the child may have had in this institution and on the quality of the relationship that he/she may have established with these persons, in addition to the specific features of each child and the length of time this lack of permanence implied in living in an institution may have lasted.
To the question of whether there are behaviors that may be generalized to all institutionalized children, Carmen Amorós answered "no", for there are not only very different working patterns in the many institutions, but also because each child is different and has his/her own capacity to tolerate frustrations and to recover from difficult experiences and as is his/her own capacity to forgive and to begin a relationship. Thus, each child metabolizes, elaborates, in a distinct way, life experiences. What is observed is a clear tendency in the institutionalized children to ask for a family.