ABSTRACT
The conventional wisdom about residential care is that empirical research leads to the inevitable conclusion that residential care should only be used as a last resort. I describe and critique four influential research programs or summaries that take the conventional view. First, especially influential is the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP). The BEIP is a sophisticated and well-reported study of an unusual group of very young children in a very unusual setting that should not be generalized to older children or non-depriving environments. Second, a 2014 “consensus statement” endorsed by the Board of Directors of the American Orthopsychiatric Association calls for severe limits on residential care for all children and youth. The research used to support the statement is inadequate to support the broad generalizations made. Similarly, a “Statement of Policy from the Lancet Group Commission” is based on a summary of research, much of it decades old and on infants and very young children in extreme environments, that goes far beyond what the research shows. Finally, a review of past reviews and other studies on actual institutional abuse and a broader survey on research like that covered in the first three examples focuses on research on infants and young children and its findings, too, should not be generalized to other age groups and other settings.
