Joyce Robertson


Joyce Robertson was a British psychiatric social worker, child behavioural researcher, childcare pioneer and pacifist, who was most notable for changing attitudes to the societally acceptable, institutionalised care and hospitalisation of young children. In the late 1940s Robertson worked with Anna Freud first at the Well Baby Clinic and later in the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic. She was later joined by her husband James Robertson. In 1965, both of them moved to the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations to work with John Bowlby on the Young Children in Brief Separation project and the development of attachment theory. This was to research the mental state and psychological development of children who underwent brief separation from their parents. Later in her career, Robertson worked with her husband to produce a series of celebrated documentary films that highlighted the reaction of small children who were separated from their parents. These were shown in hospitals, foster care and state run hospitals. Later she was known for promoting the idea of foster care instead of residential nurseries.

Life

Robertson came from a large working-class family in London. Robertson left Grammar school in 1933 when she was 14 and enrolled for evening classes at the Workers' Educational Association. In 1939, Joyce met her husband John Robertson in Birmingham while he was studying the humanities at the Fircroft College for the Higher Education of Working Men and she was studying at the Hillcroft college for working women. During World War II, both Joyce and her James Robertson were conscientious objectors. In late 1940 both Joyce and her husband were working at the Pacifist Service Unit, in East London with the victims of the bombing.
Joyce had two daughters, whose married names are Katherine McGilly, born 1944 and Jean Clelland, born 1950. She had two grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

Career

In January 1941, Robertson as a student went to work with Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham in Hampstead to look after babies. Freud and Burlingham at the time were offering shelter to women with families who had been bombed out. Knowing that Robertson came from a large family and as she was the only Briton in the war nurseries, Freud employed her and asked her to research the different methods of childcare and to determine if there was types of practices in use and write detailed observations on pieces of card. A few weeks later, James Robertson was employed by Freud as a boilerman, fire watcher and handyman. At that time, James Robertson was courting Joyce Robertson and it was through her that James met Freud.
Freud asked Roberson to care for a young baby called Josef and all the while observing Robertson in the mother-child relationship with Robertson discussing the care relationship with Freud. Freud found that Robertson's hearty nature enabled her to connect with the small baby who responded to the care. Freud then asked Robertson to care for a little boy who was 5 months old. Over months, Robertson formed a strong attachment to the wee boy and would take him on walks. These observations of the mother-child relationship and resultant discussions was the start of attachment research that would eventually lead to Attachment theory. Robertson remembered kneeling on the floor with Freud while they sorted the different observation scribblings, that would eventually be written up as a paper by Robertson and her husband and was known as Reactions of small children to short-term separation of the mother, in light of new observations.
Robertson's took time off her work for the birth of her first daughter in 1944. In the early 1950's Joyce had to take her baby into hospital for treatment. Robertson was devastated to discover she was not able to visit her child, although she knew that the baby needed her. At that time, the rule was no mothers, with hospital visits commonly limited to 30 minutes per week. This experience sparked Robertson's interest in the field of childcare.
She didn't return to work with Freud until 1957, when her second daughter started primary school. She worked initially in the Well Baby Clinic. At the clinic, she started the first parent-toddler group. Joyce understood that the parents would need help in understanding their infants new development stage, once they moved out of the clinic. Later she moved to kindergarten of the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic. In 1948, her husband James Robertson joined the Tavistock Clinic to make observations of the behaviour of small children.
In 1952, her husband James made the film A Two-Year-Old Goes to Hospital alongside a paper published with Bowlby. James and Bowlby were planning to abandon the documentary as the child being studied, a young girl Laura did not cry very much. Laura had been in hospital for eight days, admitted for a hernia operation.In the film the mother is seen leaving the child and is assured by the nurse that she would settle down when she leaves. When the mother does leave, Laura reacts violently and her mood changes for the worst. By the end of the stay it shown that Laura is withdrawn and depressed. When her husband and Bowlby showed them the film, it was Joyce who made the critical breakthrough in realising why Laura was not crying, being a desperate attempt by the tiny girl to control her feelings. The film had an enormous impact and it was agreed that mothers would be able to spend the night with their children in hospital.

Early case study

In 1954, Robertson's second daughter, Jean who at the time was four years old required a tonsillectomy. Robertson kept a diary of the event, which resulted in a paper titled: A Mother's Observations on the Tonsillectomy of Her Four-Year-Old Daughter. The paper was published in 1956 in the journal The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child and had several pages of comments by Anna Freud. Joyce began writing the diary six weeks before the visit to the hospital and included daily entries that were continually added until three weeks after the 3 day visit was completed. In addition, addendum's were written in during the 11th and 20th weeks, after the visit.
In summarising the paper, Joyce concluded that her presence and response to questions, enabled Jean to cope with the fear of hospitalisation. The kinds words and presence of her mother enabled Jean to retain trust in Joyce and enabled her to go home happy. However, the descriptions in the diary indicate that even for a 3 day hospitalisation and operation that was both successful and remarkably common from a medical perspective, it filled Jean's life for six months.

Foster care

Introduction

In the early-1960s, her husband James and John Bowlby, both working at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, began to disagree on the factors involved in separating children from their parents. In 1960, Bowlby published a paper, Grief and Mourning in Infancy and Early Childhood In the paper Bowlby made what many in the profession considered a sweeping generalisations without evidence stating:
By that point more than 25 years had passed when research had been conducted as direct observational studies into the effects of separation of young children from their mothers, mostly in the form of retrospective or follow-up studies. Those that had been completed were often completed in hospitals instead of a natural environments like the home or residential care. Anna Freud interjected in the argument with a review of Bowlby's articles, that she published in the same year, Discussion of Dr. John Bowlby's Paper. She criticised his approach stating:
Freud stressed the lack of relevant data in which to draw conclusions: we need to supplement our observations, excluding group or ward conditions. In a paper titled: Brief separations by the psychologist Christoph M. Heinicke and psychiatric social worker, Ilse J Westheimer, both colleagues of Bowlby at the clinic, discussed their observations, stated that their data could not determine the influence of institutional factors, including that of multiple caretakers. They speculated that:if it were possible to contrast a minimal care situation with one involving highly individualized care, then one might get quite different results. In a paper published in 1961, Maternal deprivation: Toward an empirical and conceptual re-evaluation, the paediatrician and psychologist Leon J. Yarrow conducted a definitive review of research and concluded that maternal separation had never been studied under pure conditions. Yarrow believed the complicating factors were always present. In Bowlby's book, Attachment and Loss there is a passing reference to the complexities of the institutional situation, there is a disappointing emphasis on the assertion that regardless of age and conditions of care, the young child's response to separation is usually the mourning sequence initiated by acute distress: The subjects in the various studies differ, e.g. there is a variance in age, the type of home varies, the type of hospital or clinic they visit varies, the type of care they receive and the length of time they at the away from home. In spite of different backgrounds and expectations of the observers, the findings are remarkable in one aspect. That is once a child is aged six months, they tend to respond to the event of separation from mother in certain typical ways. Without citing the evidence regarding the influence of each class of variable, Bowlby asserts that 'by far the most important variable’ is the absence of the mother, and dismisses other variables as relatively unimportant.
James and Joyce decided to try and determine the influence of variables on the behaviour of healthy young children during a ten-day separation from the mother. The couple decided to become foster parents to a series of young children by providing 24-hour support and make written and filmed observations of their reactions. James made a proposal to Bowlby, who at the time was director of the Tavistock clinic for new project that would look at separation in young children in much much more detail. In 1963, Bowlby assigned £1000 pounds for the new unit and in the same year, Robertson joined her husband at the Tavistock clinic as a research associate to work on a project that would be known as Young Children in Brief Separation.

Young Children in Brief Separation

The Robertson's started their work by conducting a comprehensive research review, similar to the type of review that Yarrow conducted. Their purpose in the project was to study the influence of variables including age, level of maturity and object constancy, previous parent-child relationships and quality of substitute care on responses of young children to separation from their mother, all to illustrate optimal substitute care. The subjects that were to be selected were to be aged between 1.5 and 2.5 years and be healthy, loved and never been out of their mothers care. The methods to use involved non-statistical naturalist observations throughout day, when they are away with the use of checklists along with tape recordings. During the 1950s, James Robertson had used a 16mm movie camera to study the reactions of young children who were being admitted to hospital for treatment, and planned to film, Cinéma vérité recordings of around 20 minutes every day, that could be studied later.
One child was to be observed over a nine-day period while staying in a residential nursery, where staff were well intentioned and kind but could not and would not provide substitute mothering or take cognizance and consideration of individual needs of the child. Four other children were to be selected who would be taken into a workers home who acted as the foster home where stress was eliminated and the individual needs of the child were met by one mothering person. The four children that were to be fostered were Kate, Thomas, Jane and Lucy and whose mothers were going into hospital for a birth of a second child and no other family member was available to care for them. The fifth child was called John, who was admitted to a residential nursery, due to the same circumstances as the other children. The ages of the fostered children and single residential child were as follows:
The children that were selected were healthy and happily attached to their parents and had never been subject to separation before. They were allowed to become familiar with the Robertson home. Joyce Robertson found out everything she could about the children, what their diets were, what their daily routines were and what they liked and disliked. When the children moved into the workers homes, they brought along familiar things, like family photographs, photographs of their mothers and toys. Contact between the children and their family via their father who was allowed to visit on a regular basis and if possible, on a daily basis. John in contrast didn't have a comparable placement procedure, rather he was placed in the residential nursery with their normal placement procedure.
In the case of two and half year old Kate, Joyce spent a month visiting the family before the project began, resulting in Kate forming a strong attachment to Joyce. Gradually Kate started to show signs of anxiety after moving into the apartment of the Robertson's. In one play episode, Kate recreates her own house and states that she loves her parents and wants to see them, but her play parents do not seem to want her. She stated:Throw them in the dustbin and demands they leave the room, but soon begins to cry stating she wants them back. For Jane the experience is worse. When her father visits she seems remote, laughs unnaturally and cries when her father tries to leaves. When she is out for walks and walking pass her own house which she recognises, she became distressed. The Robertson's believed that at 17 months Jane was too young to assimilate Joyce or to retain a clear image of her mother. Jane became extraordinary attached to Joyce and remained in the state even when she went home where she had to share her mother with a new baby. Joyce believed that Janes experience was largely positive, even learning new words. When Janes mother arrived, she accepted her immediately. Thomas, the oldest of the group, suffered the most. He had trouble accepting Joyce's care. In the film he displays his emotions by mixing both affection and aggression towards Joyce and clearly showing his anxiety at the situation. Thomas also avoided looking at his mothers picture. The Robertson's believed that Thomas's state was one of manageable anxiety. When talking about Lucy, Joyce stated that Lucy signalled that she visit the family, which she did several times. On the last visit, Joyce and the family visit a park where Lucy invents a game of separation and reunion, in which she walks Joyce away, then runs back to her mother, then reverses the games, but at no time does she run back to Joyce.

Findings

The finding's from the project which ran from 1965 to 1976 were contrary to much of the published literature. Separation per se did not cause acute stress and despair, but rather anxiety that could be kept to a minimum and development allowed to continue. Data indicated that 1 year old's make a complete transfer to the caretaker, while 2 year old's are more ambivalent. The institutionalized child displayed evidence of trauma and cumulative stresses after 6 years. Their 1971 paper Young Children in Brief Separation, A Fresh Look was also published in the journal, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. In the summary section, the Robertson's concluded that Bowlby had overgeneralised James Robertson earlier findings of how children respond in institutional settings. They concluded by stating:
Our findings do not support Bowlby’s generalisations about the responses of young children to separation from the mother per se, nor do they support his theory on grief and mourning in infancy and early childhood. … but we continue to share his concern about the potential harm associated with early separation from the mother
The Robertson's believed that no matter how good the substitute mother is, the separation of the child from the mother remains a hazard for a young child due to the discontinuity of the mother-child relationship. Each of the four children were able to form a bond with Joyce, and after the separation, were able to reform that bond with their mother. The Robertson's were convinced that if a substitute mother is provided, the child will reach out and bond with the substitute mother, entering into a relationship that will reduce the stress suffered by the child. They suggested that regular contract with a parent, along with reminders such a photographs of their mother would help the child cope with separation. They also suggested that when a child was placed in an unfamiliar environment, the maintenance of familiar home routines would remind them of their home and family, lessening separation anxiety.
Today, these findings can be found in use in day nurseries and day care centres. UK government policy mandates for childcare provision that regulates the permitted child to staff ratio for childcare providers, to ensure that children receive a sufficient amount of attention and stimulation from their substitute mothers.

Award ceremony

In 1969, the Robertson's were attending an awards ceremony to collect an award for their film, JOHN, aged 17 months, for 9 days in a residential nursery. They were told that their film was not going to be shown. However, they decided to take along the film and a projector, in the off-chance that they could show a segment. At the ceremony they insisted on showing 10 minutes of the it. Attending the ceremony was Lord Keith Joseph, at the time opposition spokesman on Social Services at the Department of Health and Social Care. Joseph was so struck by the film that he ordered that all key people in his department to watch the film and as a result of that, all the civil servants in the department were also affected. This resulted in a impetus that eventually led to the closing residential care nurseries in Great Britain.

Retirement

When the Robertson's retired from the Tavistock clinic, they immediately established the Robertson Centre in 1975 as an educational trust, whose remit was to promote understanding of the emotional needs of infants and young children. During their time at the centre, they continued to publish high quality articles, with a focus on adoption and fostering and as well as promoting their films.

Awards