Psychology Students Explore Idea of Attachment at Foundlings Museum

18/11/2011

Students stand in front of a statue of founder of the Foundling Hospital, Thomas Coram

Why do we become attached and what happens when that attachment is broken? A group of twenty-two AS Level Psychology students looked in depth at this issue when they visited the 'Foundling Voices' exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London's Russell Square, in October.

During the trip, the students, from the Haywards Heath campus, were able to find out more about the history of London's abandoned children or 'foundlings' throughout history. The museum, is on the site of the former Foundling Hospital, London's first official home for abandoned children, which was founded in 1739, by Thomas Coram and didn't close until 1954. It was a children's home established for the 'education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children.'

When a child was either abandoned or placed in the care of the Foundling Hospital, the family was not able to have any further contact with them. Babies would then be sent to a wet nurse in the countryside until they were 4 or 5 years old, who would be paid to raise the child within their own family. The children would then be returned to the hospital, where girls would train as domestic servants, and boys would start training for service in the military. For many children, this experience was particularly traumatic as they had no idea that their foster family was not their biological family.

Subject Leader for Psychology at the Haywards Heath campus, Wendy Garnham, explained how the trip supported recent classroom-based work on attachment, saying: "As part of the AS Psychology course, students have to study what happens when attachments are broken. Can children go on to form healthy relationships afterwards, and what are some of the factors that affect this? Our trip to the Foundling Museum enabled students to see and hear for themselves the effect such separations have on individuals rather than just reading about it in the textbook. Students participated in role-plays, examined artefacts from children's lives at the hospital and were able to read some of the letters parents had written to their children, even though the children never received these during their time at the hospital. It really helped to give students an awareness of what it must be like for an attachment to be broken, for both parent and child."

Student Megan Sparrow who is 16, and lives in Haywards Heath said: "It was an informative, inspirational day out and all the staff at the museum were very good. Although some of the stories were very sad and emotional, they were useful, real-life examples relating to our study of attachment."