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Description: Abstract Objectives: To map out characteristics (populations studied, sample size, methodology, research questions, cantons of interest, indexing in bibliographic databases, etc.) and findings of a sample of the Swiss literature on leaving institutional care and institutional care leavers. Methods: I sought to screen all dissertations and theses written by Swiss social work students of 4 higher education institutions located in the western part of Switzerland: HETS Lausanne, HETS Fribourg, HETS Genève and HETS Valais. To do so the titles of all institutional dissertations published since 1919 were extracted from online lists, internal lists provided by librarians, results from a Swisscovery search, along with publications I was already aware of. The reference lists of all included sources were also manually screened for additional studies. The findings (qualitative and quantitative) of all relevant studies were then summarised. Study design: Scoping review Results: I screened the titles of 1685 publications from HETS Fribourg, 1598 publications from HETS Valais, over 2300 publications from HETS Genève and over 3000 publications from HETS Lausanne. 78 publications were deemed potentially relevant and sought for full-text assessment. 65 publications assessed at full-text were judged to focus on leaving care. The earliest leaving care thesis was published in 1939 and the latest in 2022. Each year from 1919-2022 between 0 and 4 theses focusing on leaving care were published. The most commonly recruited participants were: care leavers (n=52 theses, 80.00%), residential youth workers (n=21, 32.31%) and children’s homes directors (n=11, 16.92%). The youngest care leavers studied were 14 years old and the oldest 60. Most data focused on care leavers aged 15 to 30 years old. Among 52 theses care leaver sample sizes ranged from 1 to 103, for a total combined sample of 684 care leavers. Most theses had between 3 and 8 care leaver participants. Authors studying leaving care used qualitative methods in all but one thesis (n=64, 98.46%). 27 unique recruitment strategies were extracted from 64 leaving care theses. The most common recruitment strategies were: children’s homes lists of previous residents (n=26 theses, 40.63%), contacting children’s homes or children’s homes managers (n=19, 29.69%), word of mouth (n=16, 25.00%) and direct recruitment of care leavers known to the study authors (n=13, 20.31%). The effectiveness of recruitment strategies could not be determined. Care leavers studied had lived in a total of 65 different children’s homes, most commonly la Maison des jeunes (VD) (n=5 theses), les Acacias - Astural (GE) (n=4), la Clairière (GE) (n=4), la Rambarde (VD) (n=4) and Foyer UCF (VD) (n=4). The vast majority of leaving care theses focused on care leavers from canton Vaud (n=31 theses, 47.70%) and Geneva (n=25, 38.46%). Out of 61 theses, 41 (67.21%) were only found on Swisscovery, 7 (11.48%) could only be found in Renouvaud and 14 (22.95%) could be found on both databases. Limitations: Limitations include a risk of having missed relevant theses, potential bias arising from recruitment strategies used by theses authors, limited quantitative data and the subjectivity involved in selecting and synthesising study findings. Funding: No funding was received for this work. Registration and study protocol: See https://osf.io/swtyx/. Data and materials: See https://osf.io/swtyx/. Keywords: care leaver, leaving care, residential care, children’s homes, Switzerland