Involving The Parents
Anna Freud soon realised - as others, like Winnicott and Bowlby also realised - that the policy of evacuation, saved many children from one kind of danger, but exposed them to the harmful consequences of broken attachments (Bowlby, 1951). This led Anna Freud and her staff to involve the absent parents as much as possible. Unlike the typical British residential nurseries, mothers and fathers were given free access to their children day and night. Mothers were encouraged to live in and work as house keepers so that they could nurse their babies and sibling groups were accepted together. Employing mothers in the kitchen and household areas of the nursery alleviated some practical difficulties of finding staff, and more importantly enabled some children to remain close to their mothers (A. Freud, 1973a).
Above: Parents visiting New Barn.
"Families" Of Children
Despite the best attempts to maintain links with parents, the conditions of war did not always make ongoing contact possible, and many of the familiar difficulties of traumatized and institutionalised children began to be apparent. Despite the care provided, some children showed a delay in their development in terms of wetting and soiling, aggressive behaviour and tantrums or emotional withdrawal and self-stimulation (e.g. head-banging). Anna Freud recognised that, while the physical and intellectual needs of the children were being met - often in ways that were 'superior' to home life - it was the emotional needs of the child that were most likely to suffer in a residential setting. In particular, the attachment needs of the child - and the subsequent developments that took place as a result of such an attachment - were more or less unsatisfied within the residential setting (A. Freud and Burlingham, 1943).
As a consequence, after the nursery had been running for a year, Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham reorganised the nursery population into 'artificial families' of 4 or 5 children and one "mother" (A. Freud, 1973a), formed according to the preferences of the staff and the young children. This re-organisation had immediate effects on the children: "The result of this arrangement was astonishing in its force and immediacy. The need for individual attachment . came out in a rush and in the course of one week all six families were completely and firmly established" (A. Freud, 1973a, p 220). With the development of positive relationships to carers, children were quickly able to overcome developmental delays (such as in relation to feeding or sleeping) and developed an emotional "aliveness" that is so often absent in institutionalised children.
Above: Children at New Barn.