Title: Acompanhamento do desenvolvimento infantil em creches.
Abstract: The period of life in which children are enrolled in institutions of child education (pre-school and day care centers) is a critical phase for the child development.Among the developmental areas, the language is the most susceptible since it strongly needs someone else's intervention.Due to the development importance child follow-up is a basic health care in nursing.The purpose of this study was to describe the development profile, specially regarding language abilities of healthy children with ages ranging from 0 to 6 incomplete years, who were enrolled in child day care centers.This is a quantitative, descriptive and longitudinal (cohort) study with a non-probabilistic sampling.The Denver II Developmental Screening Test (DDST II) was used.From 2001 to 2004, 150 DDST III were applied in children with ages varying from 4 months and 23 days up to 5 years, 7 months and 11 days.These children were enrolled in good quality Day Care Centers located in the city of São Paulo.The criteria of inclusion were as follows: identified gestational age (for those under the age of 2 years), lack of congenital malformation, born Brazilian (due to the language area) and never been enrolled in a day care center before.The socioeconomic condition of the families was homogeneous, average of 7.60 minimum wage, thus, above the mean income per capita in the metropolitan area of São Paulo, in the same period, which was 4.28 minimum wages.The results were statistically equal in three Day Care Centers, both for the global result of the DDST II and for the language ability areas alone.There was no statistical association of the results regarding gender.In terms of global results, a statistically significant improve was observed in the five evaluations performed (1 a x 3 a p=0.015).Language performance maintained statistically equal on these five moments.Consequently, it was possible to demonstrate the following likelihood features: the three institutions were not able to optimize the conditions needed to give the child full development of his/her language abilities and/or the DDST II did not allow an adequate screening in this area.In the first option, it seems that language abilities may decrease when the child reaches the age of three years and developing later.At this moment, the educator/child module is below the recommended level.Regarding the second option, the DDSTII is not yet validated for the Portuguese language in Brazil.It was concluded that to enroll children in day care centers seems to be effective for the global child development.Regarding language abilities further studies are still needed.