Authors B Sins of the Father ➝ Snow ➝ A Thousand Moons ➝ The Black Tower ➝ The Dictator's Wife ➝ The Promise ➝ Ghost River ➝ I'll Be Right Here ➝ The Heart's Invisible Furies ➝ Grace and Mary ➝ Villette ➝ The Orphan of Salt Winds ➝ Lost for words ➝ To Die For ➝ Quirke (series) ➝ Rocks in the Belly ➝ Mr Timothy ➝ The Birdcage Library ➝ Blood ➝ Christine Falls ➝ The Elements ➝ This House is Haunted ➝ Dust ➝ Jane Eyre ➝ The Other Princess: A Novel of Queen Victoria's Goddaughter ➝ Different Genes ➝ Agony of desertion (out of print) ➝ The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel ➝ The Butterfly Lampshade ➝ Common People ➝ The White Girl ➝ The Foster Child: ➝ The Thief of Time ➝ Clade ➝ Death of an Avid Reader ➝ The Chocolate Maker's Wife ➝ The Strange Adventures of H ➝ Back to Top

Radio & Podcast Discovering you are not who you thought you were ABC God Forbid What happens when you find out new knowledge about yourself via DNA and other means? This is the question posed to 2 adoptees in this podcast, Vietnamese born and Australian raised Lynelle Long and Marlene Sciclune, whose heritage is Australian First Nations and Maltese. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Orphan X (novel series) Gregg Hurwitz 2016 Orphan X (2016) is a thriller written by American novelist Gregg Hurwitz. It is the first in a series of books centred around Evan Smoak. At the age of 12, Evan was enrolled in a secret operation to train orphans as assassins for government agencies. Evan or Orphan X maintains access to the program’s funding and weapons after the secret operation is closed and he becomes a vigilante assassin. Other books in the series are Buy a Bullet (2016), The Nowhere Man (2017), Hellbent (2018), Out in the Dark (2019), Into The Fire (2020) and The Prodigal Son (2021). External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Hegel's Owl. The Life of Bernard Smith Sheridan Palmer 2016 Hegel's Owl is a history of ideas as well as a biography of Bernard Smith who, from humble beginnings in foster care, became known as the 'father' of art history in Australia. External Website

Poets Vicki Roach Vicki Roach Aboriginal Australian activist and writer, Vicki Roach (b. 1958), was in an institution and in foster care as a child.Vicki Roach is a Yiun woman and a member of the Stolen Generations. She was taken from her mother—also a member of the Stolen Generations who had been in the notorious Parramatta Girls Home—when she was two years of age. Vicki’s mother had requested the state care for her child while she went into an unmarried mother’s home and had another child. What was supposed to be a temporary arrangement ended up with Vicki being made a ward of the (NSW) state and placed into a white foster home in the western Sydney suburb of Carramar. Education has been a significant force in Vicki Roach’s life. She left school at 13, but took on a Bachelor degree with the Institute of Koorie Education at Deakin University during one stint in prison. From there she went on to do a Masters through Swinburne University, and in 2009 was onto a PhD. Vicki Roach has been publishing poetry and essays since 2000. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Scenes From the Life of Harriet Tubman Sarah Hopkins Bradford 1869 In 1869, four years after the end of the Civil War, Sarah Hopkins Bradford wrote her first of two groundbreaking books, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. Tubman escaped slavery and then returned to help many others escape as well; travelling to the northern United States and Canada before the Civil War, using the Underground Railroad. Bradford wrote the book, using extensive interviews with Tubman, to raise funds for Tubman's support. The two became friends. It was the first Tubman biography of any depth. Bradford was one of the first Caucasian writers to deal with African-American topics, and her work attracted worldwide fame, selling very well. In 1886, she followed up with Harriet Tubman, Moses of Her People, again to assist in supporting Tubman. Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and political activist. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another enslaved person, but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. After her injury, Tubman began experiencing strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God. These experiences, combined with her Methodist upbringing, led her to become devoutly religious. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Kingdom Jo Nesbo 2020 The gripping new standalone thriller from multi-million copy bestseller, Jo Nesbo. When Roy and Carl's parents die suddenly, sixteen-year-old Roy is left as protector to his impulsive younger brother. But when Carl decides to travel the world in search of his fortune, Roy stays behind in their sleepy village, satisfied with his peaceful life as a mechanic.Some years later, Carl returns with his charismatic new wife, Shannon - an architect. T External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Norma Jean: My Secret Life With Marilyn Monroe Ted Jordan 1989 A personal account of the author's twenty-year relationship with the iconic Marilyn Monroe who was in foster care, children's homes and kinship care as a child. External Website

Sport Efe Obada Efe Obada Nigerian born gridiron footballer, Efe Obada (b. 1992), was taken from The Netherlands (where he lived with his mother) with his sister to London when he was about 10 years old. The children were abandoned on the streets. A security guard took the children in and contacted their mother who arranged for them to stay with a friend of hers. Soon after, Obada and his sister ended up in the foster care system, living in more than 10 different homes.(where they'd been living with their mother for 2 years). The children were abandoned on the streets of London. A security guard looked after them and contacted their mother who arranged for a friend to care for the 2. Soon after, Obada and his sister ended in the foster care system, living in more than 10 different homes. Obada's life changed when he began playing American football in London. He eventually moved to the States and is currently playing for the Washington Commanders. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Whatever happened to the little girl who played Annie? Lisa Flowers 2018 Since its inception in 1924, Little Orphan Annie has become an American icon. Actress Aileen Quinn adopted the role in 1982 for the John Huston-directed film, forever cementing her place in pop culture. This article explores what happened to Aileen Quinn later in her life. External Website

Films/Videos Take Care of Maya 2023 Take Care of Maya (2023) is a documentary (on Netflix) telling the story of what happened to Maya Kowalski when she was 10 and admitted to the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St Petersburg, Florida. Hospital staff expressed concern about the treatment Maya was already receiving (under medical guidance) and alerted the child protection team. Dr Sally Smith, the medical director the child protection team, decided that Maya’s mother had Munchausen syndrome by proxy. May Kowalski was then removed from the care of her parents and held in state custody (while remaining in hospital). The Kowalskis have filed a lawsuit against Johns Hopkins, with a trail set to start in September 2023. External Website

Films/Videos Salt 2010 Salt (2010), directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Angelina Jolie, is a fast-paced espionage thriller about identity, loyalty, and state manipulation. Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a skilled CIA officer accused of being a Russian sleeper agent. Salt was orphaned as a child and raised in Russia, where she was trained from a young age to become a deep-cover operative embedded in the U.S. A care-experienced protagonist whose early vulnerability is weaponised by the state External Website

Actors Brian Syron Brian Syron (19 November 1934 – 14 October 1993) was a human rights advocate, teacher, actor, writer, stage director and Australia's first Indigenous feature film director who has been recognised as the first First Nations feature film director. Brian Syron was born in Balmain, Sydney to Daniel Syron, a Biripi (also known as Birpai) man from New South Wales and Elizabeth Murray from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England. During his childhood, Brian learned about his Aboriginal heritage by living with his paternal grandmother at Karuah, 184 km north of Sydney, for long chuncks of time. When he was fourteen, Brian ended up in the Grafton Correctional Centre. By the age of twenty-two, Brian had become a male model and began studying acting at the Ensemble Theatre Company in Sydney. Brian later co-founded a theatre company in Saratogo Springs in New York and did a number of tours throughout the country, including through the southern states where segregation prompted him to direct his attention to Aboriginal issues in Australia. Back in Australia, Brian Styron taught Aboriginal actors, including Denis Walker, Gary Foley, Jack Davis, Maureen Watson and Hyllus Maris. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Putting Down Roots Deidre Michell 2010 In this book, Women Journeying With Spirit, every woman’s journey is a reflection of her unique spirit, and yet each woman has identified the very strong threads that bind together spirituality with everyday life. In no story is spirituality something external or additional to the mundane, to reality, and so rather than this being a volume of mystic visions or transfiguring illuminations, it conveys a search for meaning amid the often considerable challenges of personal experiences. .In her chapter, "Putting Down Roots" Deidre Michell reflects on the impact of being in foster care for most of her childhood. External Website

Performing Arts Comedian, author, screenwriter Deborah Frances-White Deborah Frances-White is a London-based comedian, author and screenwriter who also delivers corporate seminars. Frances-White was born in Australia and adopted at ten days old. She grew up in Brisbane, Queensland. Her family converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses when she was a teenager; Frances-White has since left the community and describes herself as an atheist and moved to London. Her BBC Radio 4 series 'Deborah Frances-White Rolls the Dice' won her a Writers Guild Award. Her film 'Say My Name' was out in spring 2019. She is developing a play for the Almeida, a television series with Merman for Netflix and she recently finished the screenplay for her second film Making Babies for Redwave Films. Her book The Guilty Feminist was published by Virago in 2021. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Book Review: That Reminds Me Barbara Grant 2020 Derek Owusu’s startling debut, That Reminds Me, shows us that love is fragile, and adults are not always the best caretakers. It is a powerful, sometimes haunting fictional memoir, about the failure of love, narrated through the eyes of a young vulnerable black boy called K. K is placed into the care system by his Ghanaian mother. He knows not why. His early childhood years are spent in foster care, in a rural community based outside of London. A place where the colour of his skin sets him apart. Split into five chronological sections, with a narrator who recites K’s life to Anansi, the renowned trickster in Caribbean and West African folklore, they contain fragments of stories, building up a complex picture of a troubled life. Life in care is not the refuge his mum may have hoped. His foster home and school memories are peppered with hidden abuse, neglect and spitefulness as K struggles with his identity in a cruel, loveless foster family. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Forgotten Les Cummings 2008 Les Cummings was three when he was sent to the Children's Cottage Homes in Portsmouth, England. A traumatised little boy, he dreamed his mother would come back for him. She never did. Instead he fell victim to the worst abusers and a system that didn't care. Conditions at the home were harsh, the children poorly fed and hungry, dressed in stained second-hand clothes. But worse than that was the violence from some of the staff - Les was frequently punched, kicked and locked in the cellar as punishment. Children were dragged out of bed at night to be abused. Some simply disappeared. At the age of seven Les was sent to live with foster parents where for over two years he was beaten, starved and sexually abused. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots Deborah Feldman 2012 Now a Netflix original series! Unorthodox is the bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman's growing up in kinship care as a member of an ultra orthodox Jewish group. As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. Yet in spite of her repressive upbringing, Deborah grew into an independent-minded young woman whose stolen moments reading about the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott helped her to imagine an alternative way of life among the skyscrapers of Manhattan. External Website

Academic Articles The American West and the Archetypel Orpan Louie Attebery ➝ The Care-Experienced Graduates' Decision-Making, Choices and Destinations Project: Phase Two Report Zoe Baker ➝ From Us to Us: A collection of advice from care-experienced graduates to care-experienced graduates Zoe Baker ➝ "One of Us": Orphaned Selves and Legitimacy in Australian Autobiography Jack Bowers ➝ 45 Care Leaver Friendly Ways Care Leavers Association ➝ Popular perceptions of disrupted childhoods Kirsty Capes ➝ Interrogating ‘poor outcomes’ and disrupted care in children’s fiction Kirsty Capes ➝ ‘Is this a joke?’ Exploring how care experienced people feel their way through inheritance and what their emotions ‘do’, Delyth Edwards & Rosie Canning ➝ Reconsidering the care-crime connection in a climate of crisis Claire Fitzpatrick ➝ Living with the past: the creation of the stolen generation positionality Stephanie Gilbert ➝ A childhood on paper Managing access to child care files by post-care adults Jim Goddard ➝ What "The Mandalorian" Teaches Us About Foster Care Sophia Alexandra Hall ➝ Louis Armstrong’s “Karnofsky Document”: The Reaffirmation of Social Death and the Afterlife of Emotional Labor Dalton Jones ➝ A New Stolen Generation? Michael Lavarch ➝ Fremantle: Reflections of a child migrant Michael McCarthy ➝ Two Mothers - Twice the blessing or was I cursed? Deidre Michell ➝ What Makes a Family? The Radical Portrayal of Diverse Families in Australian Picture Books Sarah Mokrzycki ➝ Children Without Childhood: The Emotionality of Orphaned Children and Images of Their Rescuers in Selected Works of English and Canadian Literature Irena Avsenik Nabergoj ➝ The Mem Sahib, the Worthy, the Rajah and His Minions: Some Reflections on the Class Politics of The Secret Garden Jerry Phillips ➝ "Let's Go to the Movies": Filmic Representations of Gay Foster and Adoptive Parents Damien Riggs ➝ The Role of Orphan Films in the 21st Century Archive Dan Streible ➝ Oliver Twisted: the origins of Lord Voldemort in the Dickensian orphan. James Washick ➝ Incarnations of the Orphan Nina Auerbach ➝ Facing the cliff-edge: care-experienced graduates’ access to and progression through taught postgraduate study in the United Kingdom Zoe Baker ➝ Revealing the Profile of Foster Parents, Biological Parents, Foster Children and the Triadic Relationship amongst them Vasiliki Baltsioti & Ignatia Farmakopoulou ➝ Social Workers’ Involvement in Policy Practice in Portugal Francisco Branco ➝ It’s My Journey: It’s My Life! Care leavers and access to social care files Care Leaver Association ➝ (Pseudo)motherhood, care constructs and the geography of the nuclear family: class, gender and the suburbs in contemporary fiction Kirsty Capes ➝ Winnie Woodfern Comes Out in Print: Story-Paper Authorship and Protolesbian Self-Representation in Antebellum America Daniel Cohen ➝ Investigating ‘care leaver’ identity: A narrative analysis of personal experience stories Craig Evans ➝ Confronting intergenerational harm: Care experience, motherhood and criminal justice involvement Claire Fitzpatrick et al ➝ Reflexivity and Lived Experience of Out-of-Home Care: Positionality as an Early Parenthood Researcher Amy Gill ➝ Fostered Voices: Narratives of US Foster Care Nikky Greer ➝ A perspective from the periphery: Re-imagining regional North Queensland women's stories using historical fiction Louise Henry ➝ From Folktales to Fiction: Orphan Characters in Children’s Literature Melanie A. Kimball ➝ Contemplating Fictional and Nonfictional Orphan Stories (2004) Dennis Leoutsakas ➝ From Hagiography to Personal Pain: Stories of Australian foster care from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century Dee Michell ➝ Exploring the legal representation of individuals in foster care: What say youth and alumni? J Jay Miller et al. ➝ Surviving the "House of a Hundred Windows": Irish Industrial Schools in Recent Fiction and Memoirs Michael Molino ➝ The politics of good intentions and what I’ve learned from Romania’s ‘orphans’ Mariela Neagu ➝ A Fragment of the Maltese Exodus: Child Migration to Australia 1953-1965 David Plowman ➝ Pumps and poetry Melanie Senior ➝ ‘Yes I’ve got some historic convictions but do the public really need protecting from me?’ The Record ➝ Lost Boys and Recovered Classics: Literary and Social Memory in Lorenzo Carcaterra's Sleepers (1995) Christopher Wilson ➝ The Care-Experienced Graduates' Decision-Making, Choices and Destinations Project: Phase one report Zoe Baker ➝ The Care-Experienced Graduates' Decision-Making, Choices and Destinations Project: Phase Three Report Zoe Baker ➝ Review: Making Home: Orphanhood, kinship, and cultural memory in contemporary American novels. Wade Bell ➝ Oliver Twist, textbook of child abuse Patricia Brennan ➝ The Perceived Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Care-Experienced People Rosie Canning et al ➝ Care leavers in the ivory tower Kirsty Capes ➝ Rewriting the Past: Gerard Mannix Flynn's Nothing to Say and James X Victoria Connor ➝ No More Standing In The Shadows – Treating The Wounds Of Historic Forced Adoption Jeannot Farmer ➝ Foster Focus Mag Foster Focus Mag ➝ More Than Our Childhoods: A survivor-led participatory approach to out-of-home care life story research Amy Gill & Dee Michell ➝ As a former foster kid, I'm giving Tracy Beaker a second chance Sophia Alexandra Hall ➝ The Adultification of Black Girls in State Care: Perspectives Sylvia Ikomi ➝ Healthy Depictions? Depicting Adoption and Adoption News Events on Broadcast News Kline, Susan L.; Chatterjee, Karishma; Karel, Amanda I. ➝ Conceptualizing Stigma Bruce G Link et al. ➝ Blood Doesn't Define Evotypical Families: Eleanor Spence's Stories of Informal and Formal Foster Care in Australia Dee Michell ➝ Out of sight: the censoring of family diversity in picture books Sarah Mokrycki ➝ Marking motherhood: Tattooing and willfulness as a response to and a way to survive child removal Lisa Morriss and Siobhan Beckwith ➝ Otherways' into the Garden: Re-Visioning the Feminine in The Secret Garden Linda Parsons ➝ Children out of place' : representations of foster care in the Australian news media Damien King Riggs ➝ Christian Science Versus the Rest Cure in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden Anne Stiles ➝ Integrating personal and professional experiences: Seven phases to integrating loss and grief. Rosemary Wanganeen ➝ A scoping review of the transition experiences and outcomes of young women leaving residential out-of-home care Yujie Zhao, Jacinta Waugh & Philip Mendes ➝ Back to Top

Films/Videos ANNA 2019 In ANNA (2019), Anna Poliatova is orphaned after a car crash, and is in an abusive relationship, addicted to drugs. Recruited by the KGB and later manipulated by the CIA, she is used as an expendable asset under the illusion of rescue and purpose. External Website