Foster Care Means Better Lives for Orphans

Even in well-run orphanages, institutional care can leave orphans with emotional and developmental problems.

But a new study published in the journal Child Development, shows that foster care offers much better outcomes than orphanage care.

The study, which arose from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, researchers assessed how more than 200 Romanian children between the ages of 5 and 42 months recognized faces, according to the article. Some of the children in the study had been raised in institutions and then placed in foster care, some stayed in institutions, and some were raised by their families.

"This study is one of the first to document the neural consequences of early institutionalization," according to Margaret C. Moulson, the study's lead author. "As such, it offers insights into both the negative effects of early psychological deprivation on children's ability to process faces, and the potential positive impact of early intervention."

The good news is that children who were placed in high-quality foster care showed the beginnings of normalized brain activity when processing faces.

Many countries with significant orphan populations are increasingly turning to foster care for orphans rather than building more orphanages. The study shows that this trend, although it is often made to save money, may greatly aid the development of these at-risk kids, according to the research team, which included members from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Children's Hospital Boston, the University of Maryland, Tulane University Health Sciences Center, and Harvard Medical School.