After the Orphanage Life Beyond the Children's Home

Addressing a significant gap in the understanding of institutional care and its effects on adult life and identity, this chronicle examines lifelong experiences after leaving care. Using interviews with people who grew up in orphanages and group homes in Victoria between 1945 and 1983, this study explores how institutionalization affected future education, employment opportunities, relationships, health, and the implications this might have for policy and practice in the out-of-home care of children.

Suellen Murray is a senior research fellow at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University. She is the author of More Than Refuge: Changing Responses to Domestic Violence. John Murphy is the associate dean of research in the faculty of arts at the University of Melbourne and a former director of the Australian Centre. He is the former director of the Center for Applied Social Research at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University. Elizabeth Branigan is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University. She has worked as a senior research officer at the Australian Institute of Family Studies and has taught in social sciences at Victoria and Swinburne Universities. Jenny Malone is a social worker with experience in the area of homelessness, social policy, and the labor market. She is a former research assistant at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University.