["Child &Family Social Work, Volume 31, Issue 3, Page 1956-1976, August 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nIndividuals with child protection service (CPS) experience face increased risks of social exclusion and unemployment. Employment is vital for both financial stability and health. Teenagers in out‐of‐home care (OHC) are particularly vulnerable to unemployment. This study uses longitudinal register data to examine the links between OHC experience, aftercare, and school‐to‐work trajectories, mapping and analyzing transitions from age 16 to 36 among three cohorts born in the 1980s. We examine the following hypotheses: (1) OHC experience is linked to a higher probability of membership in disadvantaged school‐to‐work transition clusters, including early death, premature school exit, low earnings, NEETW (Not in Education, Employment, Training, or Welfare benefits) status, and welfare reliance. (2) Receipt of aftercare moderates the association between OHC experience and transition outcomes. It increases the likelihood of more favourable trajectories, such as completing advanced education and achieving stable earnings, while reducing the risk of severely disadvantaged pathways, including early death, low earnings, NEETW status and long‐term welfare dependence. Our findings show that the OHC group has a higher probability of following disadvantaged school‐to‐work trajectories than the group without experience from CPS. Furthermore, we find that individuals in foster care at age 17 and with foster care as an aftercare measure are more likely to follow a trajectory marked by advanced education and normal earnings than those who were in foster care at 17 and did not receive aftercare. Thus, this study broadens our knowledge of the transition to adulthood for youth aging out of care.\n"]