Cheryl Polock was just 4½ years old when her mother dropped her and her siblings on the doorstep of Dalwood Children's Home in Seaforth and simply walked away.
"I remember just being left at the door," Ms Polock, now 72, recalled. "My mother left without really saying anything. We were just abandoned. I didn't see much of my parents after that."
![British child migrants posing for a publicity shot for Fairbridge Farm in Molong, NSW.](/web/20161213123145im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/8/9/6/x/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt88ox.png/1481479979831.jpg)
Ms Polock is one of an estimated 500,000 "forgotten Australians", children raised in orphanages and other institutions last century. Forgotten Australians, along with child migrants and members of the stolen generations, are the subject of a landmark research project to be launched by the University of NSW on Monday.
The national study, No Child Should Grow Up Like This, looked at the experiences of 700 people raised in institutions or foster care from the 1930s to the 1980s.
Ms Polock, who took part in the research, moved from Dalwood to an aunt's home and finally to St Joseph's Girls' Home in Lane Cove where she stayed until she was 15.
"I left that place not even knowing how to catch a train," she said. "I didn't know my way around Sydney. I really didn't know anything about real life because I'd always been in an institution. When I was young, I just accepted it because that's all I ever knew. It's only when I look back I realise how tough things were."
She found a job in a factory at Rose Bay, went on to marry and have three children and settle in Sydney's southern suburbs, but it wasn't until she was in middle-age she really came to terms with the impact of her upbringing.
"You make bad choices when you don't really know how to interact normally with other people," she said.
![Young children say grace at a dining table at Dalwood Children's Home in 1932.](/web/20161213123145im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/8/7/o/1/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt88ox.png/1481479979831.jpg)
"When you grow up in an institution you're so heavily disciplined you just do what you're told. You don't have that capacity to make decisions. You just become a person who is subservient. It took me until I was in my 40s to realise that wasn't right."
UNSW professor of social work Elizabeth Fernandez, who led the study, said the participants were deeply affected by their experiences in care with many suffering lifelong problems.
![Children playing in the front garden of Dalwood Children's Home in 1932.](/web/20161213123145im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/8/7/o/2/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt88ox.png/1481479979831.jpg)
"Every category of abuse was described," she said. "As children, they were violated in many and various ways. Sexual abuse was one of those violations but there were extremes of physical abuse, mental and emotional torture and humiliation. The food, clothing and standard of education was inadequate quite often and many children were forced into oppressive child labour."
More than 96 per cent of study participants experienced some form of maltreatment in care, most commonly physical abuse. More than 60 per cent suffered sexual abuse, which was perpetrated by adults and their peers.
!["Forgotten Australian" Cheryl Polock holds an undated photo which shows her on the right, with her sisters, from left ...](/web/20161213123145im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/8/k/f/5/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gt88ox.png/1481479979831.jpg)
Physical labour was a feature of the institutions with more than 80 per cent of participants reporting they did some type of work while under the age of 13.
The study recommends the federal government's proposed redress scheme for survivors of institutional sexual abuse be expanded to include people abused in other ways or exploited for their labour.
It also recommends that forgotten Australians, child migrants and members of the stolen generations be offered affordable legal and health services and low-cost access to aged care.
More than 40,000 Australian children live in out-of-home care, with the report recommending improvements in the child protection system to prevent children from going into care and better safeguards for those who have been removed from their families.
"The resounding comment from participants was, 'We don't want this to happen to children ever again'," Professor Fernandez said. "But we know that the children in care today are still marginalised. It is an ongoing issue."