Formation of attachment in children living in children's home

9 ABSTRACT One of a child's basic psychological needs is the need for a stabile emotional bond. The theses researches if the children from private children's home Radost are able to establish such specific emotional bonds to the carers employed there. The Czech Radost children's home follows principles and guidelines established by a well know German children's home. This German facility places emphasis on nurturing the emotional bonds of children, and as such differs considerably from classic state institutions. The underlying assumption is that given the right conditions and support, children have a high chance to create specific emotional bonds. In order to gain the necessary data it was chosen the method of qualitative evaluation with participant observation as the prevailing research strategy. The data are triangulated with some other methods including: semi-structured interviews, analysis of file documentation and a modified version "Test of Family Relationships" (Kovařík, 1993). The data analysis is enriched with knowledge and experiences from two other children's homes abroad, where saturation of psychological needs of children is a priority (Danish and German model). The research is a continuation of the diploma theses (Zemánková, 2003), where the question of specific emotional bonds was examined..