Robertson helped change ideas of what should happen to children when they are in hospital. Previously parents were hardly even allowed to visit their sick children; now they are usually allowed to stay with their child all the time that their child is in hospital, so bond disruption is minimised.

Rutter and Tizard and Hodges show that adoption is a good outcome for children, even if the adoption takes place after the child is 6 months old. These studies showed that for children that were adopted (and the earlier the better) the negative effects of privation could be reversed. Ideally adoption should happen very quickly after it becomes clear that the child cannot stay with its birth parents, and after Bowlby’s ideas were published it was common for babies to be adopted when they were only one week old. Whilst this isn’t the case any more, it is recognised that adoption is good and that more needs to be done in the UK to speed up the adoption process, which is lengthy.

Studies such as The EPPE Project showed that day care is good for children if it is high quality, including factors such as low staff: child ratio, low staff turnover, good resources, and good staff training. As a result of this from 2004 free pre-school places were available to every 3 year old.

Campbell showed that day care at an early age could be associated with negative social effects, such as aggression. Therefore maternity leave has recently been extended to last for 12