Child abuse and neglect represent a serious factor in development of children leading to different symptoms of traumatization. Children being neglected are usually subjects of foster or institutional care. Current studies show that institutional care may lead to developmental impairment especially in the area of cognitive and emotional development. We have conducted an extensive study (n = 360) monitoring the stage of cognitive and emotional development in children in foster care (n = 120), in institutional care (n = 120) and in functional biological families (n = 120).

The results of the presented study showed that children in institutional and foster care show substantially higher occurrence of traumatization symptoms coming not only from the original family but as well as from the current setting - comparing to children from functional biological families (p, 0.01). the intensity of traumatization symptoms is in strong positive correlation with impairment of cognitive (r = 0, 6; p < 0.01) as well as with emotional development (r = 0,7;p < 0.01).

The results of the study propose that children in foster and institutional care are exposed to highly stressful situations resulting not only to higher incidence of trauma symptoms but as well as to impairment in cognitive and emotional development.

Supported by the Research Grant GK MPSV-01-202.