While there is much literature on the experience of growing up in an orphanage, very few books examine life after institutional care. After the Orphanage is the first book to address how care-leavers adjust to life in the outside world. Using interviews with people who grew up in orphanages and group homes in Victoria between 1945 and 1983, the book explores how institutionalisation affected future education, employment opportunities, relationships and health, and the implications this might have for policy and practice in the out-of-home care of children.