Children in orphanages are either children who have no parents, or children who have no adequate parents or parental care, in the sense that these children are ignored, neglected, abused, etc., so social services often take them into the institutions for children without parental care.
In this paper, the case study method was used to analyze ten children in the institution, “Mala škola” Vareš. By using this method we found that there were common features in the form of certain predisposing, maintaining and trigger factors. Children often manifested low self-esteem, external locus of control, low self-efficacy, immature defence mechanisms, dysfunctional coping strategies, particularly aggression, and depression. There were also personal and contextual factors that contributed to the difficult psychological and social status of each child, such as insecure attachment, chaotic family organization, marital discord, the absence of a father or a mother, etc.
This study confirms that the orphanage children are vulnerable group of children who require serious work and ongoing support in the form of reducing the predisposing factors, and strengthening and even the formation of protective factors.
Keywords: attachment, orphanage children, a case study
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