Institutional abuse

Institutional abuse is the maltreatment of a person (often children or older adults) from a system of power. This can range from acts similar to home-based child abuse, such as neglect, physical and sexual abuse, and hunger, to the effects of assistance programs working below acceptable service standards, or relying on harsh or unfair ways to modify behavior. Institutional abuse occurs within emergency care facilities such as foster homes, group homes, kinship care homes, and pre-adoptive homes. Children, who are placed in this type of out of home care, are typically in the custody of the state. The maltreatment is usually caused by an employee of the facility. Out of home placement care is meant to be temporary; however, it can be permanent (Colorado Department of Human Services). Many solutions are underway in preventing and protecting institutionally abused children (Denvergov.org).

Institutional abuse can typically occur in a care home, nursing home, acute hospital or in-patient setting and can be any of the following:

Typical of the institutionalized bigotry that coincides with abuse, it is said that it can be considered to mainly apply to four categories of people:

This perspective often written into educational material seeks to excuse perpetrators with the "explanation" that the abused adults are all somehow mentally inept. This encourages the trend.

Institutional abuse can be divided into three categories:

These issues range from personal abuses to situational maltreatment, and differ greatly in their causes. Most institutional abuses are the result of difficult and stressful working environments, where those with the least training often have the most contact with the participants, and have the hardest schedules, least payment, and most undesirable working conditions. The high-stress working environments of care workers combined with low-quality hiring and screening practices of workers can create abusive situations through lack of experience or knowledge on the worker's part. Lack of proper training for workers can conflict or hurt institutional goals for patients through improper implementation of treatments, compounded by organizational structure that only has doctors and psychologists on site for short hours. In overstressed situations, power over the patients can bring feelings of control and significance, leading to stress being a predictor of abuse in institutional and familial settings. isolation from the community can have similar effects.

Often complicating worker issues is lack of organizational goals or policy. In childcare situations, lack of curricular recreation for children can lead to more acting out behavior, causing more stress for workers, and more inclination toward mistreatment. Patients can often be difficult to manage through inability or behavioral issues, and those who are more difficult for staff to work with are often the victims of abusive situations. It is proposed that most abuse rises of out frustration and lack of ability to properly control the patient, not intentional maltreatment.

...
Wikipedia