There is mounting evidence that children who experience early adversity are at heightened risk for developing physical and psychological sequelae later in childhood; moreover, such sequelae can be biologically embedded, impacting multiple biological systems (including the epigenome), thereby elevating the risk that these effects will persist into adulthood. Two common forms of adversity that affect tens of millions of children each year are maltreatment and removal from parental care and placement into institutional care (often because of abuse, neglect, child abandonment, and inability to care for the child). Both forms of adversity greatly elevate the risk of adverse behavioural, psychiatric, and health outcomes.
