1-132 - From Research to Practice and Policy: Improving Care for Vulnerable Children in Lower-Resource Countries

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

During the last two decades, research has consistently demonstrated that institutional care of infants and young children as usually practiced is associated with marked deficits in the development of residents and higher than expected rates of longer-term deficiencies and problems in children placed with families. Further, research has demonstrated that children’s development can be improved by interventions within institutions and by family care. This research has stimulated international organizations and some countries to improve institutions or provide family alternatives. This symposium describes how specific research and demonstration projects have contributed to practice and policy changes for vulnerable children in lower-resource countries. As such, it contributes to SRCD’s emphases on translational and international research as well as relating research to practice and policy.
Specifically, one presentation will describe a major intervention in institutions that improved children’s development and was the basis for a new policy that mandated practice changes in Baby Homes across the Russian Federation. Another presentation describes how a randomized professional foster care intervention stimulated the Romanian government to create foster care alternatives. A third presentation illustrates how a comprehensive demonstration project propelled an entire Novgorod (“state”) in Russia to move toward family support services and alternatives. Finally, these efforts will be put into a broader global context, other efforts will be described, and the characteristics of successful attempts to change practice and policy in this domain will be outlined.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Robert B McCall, Univ of Pittsburgh

Individual Presentations

• Improving Institutional Care for Young Children: New Policies in the Russian Federation - Presenting Author: Rifkat J Muhamedrahimov, St. Petersburg State University (Russian Federation)

• Bucharest Early Intervention Project: The Case for Policies Providing High Quality Foster Care for Abandoned Children - Presenting Author: Kathryn Humphreys, Tulane Univ School of Medicine; Charles H Zeanah, Tulane Univ School of Medicine; Charles A. Nelson, Boston Children's Hospital/Harvard Medical School; Nathan A Fox, Univ of Maryland

• From Institutional Care to Family Support: Development of an Effective Early Intervention Network in the Nizhy Novgorod Region - Presenting Author: Tatiana V. Morozova, Firefly (Russia); Svyatoslav V. Dovbnya, Firefly (Russia); Dana Johnson, University of Minnesota; Melinda A. Richards, Firefly (Arlington, VA); Julia G. Bogdanova, KMPG

• Global Attempts to Improve Care for Vulnerable Children - Presenting Author: Chris Groark, University of Pittsburgh