APLICACIONES INFORMÁTICAS CORE DEL NEGOCIO

As described above, the evacuation was by no means a homogenous event. If the results suggest that the evacuation has had a long-term impact on the attachment styles and psychological wellbeing of evacuees, it may be that specific variables within the experience of evacuation contribute to this effect. This study is not designed to

Chapter 1: Introduction

investigate the impact of all aspects of the evacuation, but some of those which attachment theory would suggest to be important are described below:

Age

Early research concentrated on observations of children admitted to hospital without their parents. This showed that children aged six months to four years experienced more emotional distress than children of other ages, although not all children in this age group became distressed (e.g. Schaffer and Callender, 1959). Indeed attachment theoiy predicts that the internal working models of very young children would be more susceptible to change following a change in the relationship with the primary caregiver, but the vast majority of children evacuated without their parents were over 4 years old. Research with unaccompanied refugee children suggested that children under 15 years presented with more emotional and behaviour problems, and studies that investigated long-term effects of separation suggest that separation between the ages of 4 and 10 years was associated with a worse outcome. Older evacuees with secure attachments may have developed the cognitive and emotional skills that enable them to cope adaptively with the separation experience. It is therefore predicted that evacuation will have had a greater impact on the attachment styles of people who were evacuated at a younger age.

Presence of siblings

Bowlby (1984) proposed that there is generally a hierarchy of attachment figures for each child, usually including father and older siblings if mother is the primary caregiver.

Although the child is likely to show an attachment relationship with all people in the hierarchy, s/he will prefer the principal attachment figure for security when distressed, and this figure will be most influential in the contents of internal working models of attachment (Bretherton, 1985). In a group of eighteen-month old children studied by Schaffer and Emerson (1964), approximately one third showed a principal attachment to their father. The majority of children had one main attachment and the importance of other attachment figures varied.

Heinicke and Westheimer (1965) found that the distress of siblings who are separated from their caregiver is lessened by the presence of each other. Stewart and Marvin (1984) modified the Strange Situation test and found that preschool-age children could function as an attachment figure to a younger sibling when mother was not present. This is consistent with Bowlby’s idea of a hierarchy of attachment figures and also with those of Kinzie et al. (1986; 1989) who found that the presence of a sibling was protective against distress for refugees unaccompanied by their parents. We would therefore predict that those children who were billeted with sibling(s) would experience less separation anxiety, adjust more successfully to their new environment and maintain secure attachment styles.

Duration of separation

The maximum time for which children were evacuated was for the duration of the war and they may therefore have been separated from their parents for up to six years. There is some evidence to suggest that emotional distress caused by separation may be

Chapter 1: Introduction

greater for separations of long duration (Heinicke and Westheimer, 1965), which would indicate that longer evacuations would be associated with a more negative impact on attachment. However, the foster-care literature has found that longer placements were generally associated with stronger attachments to hosts and it may be that the length of time evacuated was associated with the development of an attachment relationship with hosts, which could mitigate a negative effect.

Frequency of contact with parents

Research carried out during the evacuation, and studies of children placed in foster-care both suggest that visits by parents and other family members were a positive event, maintaining attachment to the child’s family and related to greater happiness during the separation. Only one study suggested that visits from parents were related to greater difficulty in adjustment. It is therefore hypothesized that children who were visited by their parents will have had a more positive experience during the evacuation. Children who were securely attached to their parents prior to evacuation will be better able to maintain that attachment. It is also possible that contact with parents could increase the probability of inappropriate billets being changed, resulting in an increased quality of care.

Number of billets

Studies carried out during the evacuation suggest that changes in billet were related to a negative experience for the child. This is reinforced by the attachment literature that suggests that changes in caregiving arrangements may result in changes in attachment

Research Question - If evacuation is found to influence attachment style and present psychological wellbeing, do any of the variables described above (age at evacuation, presence of siblings, duration of the evacuation, frequency of visits from parents, number of different billets, and the nature of the reunion with family) make a specific contribution?

Chapter 2:_____ Method

2 Method