THE BUCHAREST EARLY INTERVENTION PROJECT

The BEIP is a landmark study into the impact of institutional care for children.

  • Beginning in the year 2000, BEIP has compared the development of children living in care institutions to children growing up in foster care in Romania.

  • Findings from the study have demonstrated the harms of institutional care on children’s physical, emotional and cognitive development.

The study was crucial in the Romanian government’s decision to ban institutional care of children under the age of two in 2004.

  • The study contributed to the development and expansion of the Romanian government’s foster care and move away from institutions for young children, in Romania.

The BEIP’s findings have inspired far-reaching reforms to care systems across Europe, influencing the European Commission’s recent decision to stop funding institutional care programs for children.

BEIP SOCIAL IMPACTS

  • The study was crucial in the Romanian government’s decision to ban institutional care of children under the age of two in 2004.

  • The study contributed to the development and expansion of the Romanian government’s foster care and move away from institutions for young children, in Romania.

The BEIP’s findings have inspired far-reaching reforms to care systems across Europe, influencing the European Commission’s recent decision to stop funding institutional care programs for children.

You can learn more about Project BEIP by visiting the website:
https://www.bucharestearlyinterventionproject.org/

WHY INSTITUTIONAL REARING IS BAD FOR THE BRAIN: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

The BEIP findings through the assessment at 16 years of age suggest that early institutionalization leads to profound deficits in many domains examined to date, including cognitive (i.e., IQ) and socio-emotional behaviors (i.e., attachment), brain activity and structure, alterations in reward sensitivity and processing, and a greatly elevated incidence of psychiatric disorders and impairment.

 The foster care intervention was broadly effective in enhancing children’s development, and for specific domains, including brain activity (EEG), attachment, language, and cognition, there appear to be sensitive periods regulating their recovery. That is, the earlier a child was placed in foster care, the better their recovery. Although the sensitive periods for recovery vary by domain, our results suggest that placement before the age of 2 years is key.

Finally, there are a few areas, such as executive functioning (i.e., memory and cognitive monitoring; reduction of symptoms of ADHD), in which placement into foster care does not significantly impact development/performance.

 

In the EI-3 Project, we will examine whether a foster care intervention as well as an institutional caregiver intervention during this sensitive period in exposure to psychosocial deprivation will impact socioemotional, cognitive and brain development.

The proposed project will improve upon existing studies in a number of ways:

  1. Brazilian children will be studied at a younger age than were those initially in the Bucharest Project.

    • This is important because data from the Bucharest study suggest that the younger a child is when removed from an institution the better their recovery from early adversity.

  2. All children in the study, regardless of placement in an institution or foster family, will participate in a caregiving intervention.

We will collect cost-effectiveness data to inform the resources needed to support developmental outcomes.