Actors Ronald Magill English actor, Ronald Edmund Magill (21 April 1920 – 6 September 2007) was in an orphanage as a child.Ronald Magill was born in Hull, a port city in East Yorkshire, England. Ronald’s parents were both teachers. At the age of 9, Ronald’s father died and the child was sent to live in Birmingham, in an orphanage. He visited his mother in Ireland during school holidays. After the war, Magill took on a variety of performing roles until he settled in at the Nottingham Playhouse where for 9 years he worked as both artistic director and actor. He is best remembered for playing Amos Brearly in the British soap opera Emmerdale from the first episode in 1972 to 1991, and appeared again in this role in 1994 and 1995. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles John Fashanu 1992 Most people know Justin Fashanu as the world's first openly gay professional footballer. Less people know that he spent time in both residential and foster care as a child. Here he is being interviewed in 1992 for 'Who Cares?' magazine by three young people in care. (Thanks to Jim Goddard for the link) External Website

Television Shows The Serpent Queen 2022 The historical drama, The Serpent Queen (2022) tells the story of Catherine de Medici (1519-1589). Born in Italy, Catherine is orphaned when young (some sources say within weeks of her birth). She is left with a grandmother who also soon died. From then until she is shipped off to France to get married at age 14, Catherine is in a convent. According to the television series, and entirely plausible given what we know went on in convents, Catherine was treated like a servant and whipped mercilessly when 'disobedient.' Significantly, the older Catherine is played by Samantha Morton who grew up in the UK state care system. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Adopted and Locked Away: Kids promised ‘forever homes’ instead confined in for-profit institutions Associated Press 2026 In this 29 April 2026 article, Claire Galofaro & Sally Ho report on the number of adoptees who have become a part of the USA’s “troubled teen industry”. Galofaro & Ho write that despite representing only 2% of American children, adoptees make up between 25% & 40% of those in residential care, there because of their alleged reactive behaviour. Adoptees have told Galofaro & Ho that this is a “shadow orphanage system”, whereby children who are promised “forever homes” are instead institutionalized, “some for years, in oppressive and sometimes abusive facilities”. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Subjects Sarah Hopkins 2019 Daniel is a sixteen-year-old drug dealer and he's going to jail. Then, suddenly, he's not. A courtroom intervention. A long car ride to a big country house. Other 'gifted delinquents'- the elusive, devastating Rachel, and Alex, so tightly wound he seems about to shatter. So where are they? It's not a school, despite the 'lessons' with the headsets and changing images. It's not a psych unit-not if the absence of medication means anything. It's not a jail, because Daniel's free to leave. Or that's what they tell him. He knows he and the others are part of an experiment. But he doesn't know who's running it or what they're trying to prove. And he has no idea what they're doing to him. External Website

Writers Michel Houellebecqu Michel Thomas Houellebecq (b. circa 1956) was born on the French island Réunion. When he was five months old, he was sent to live in Algeria with his maternal grandparents. At around age 6, he was then transferred to the care of his paternal grandmother whose maiden name he took for his own (she died in 1978). According to Kathleen Kuiper (Britannica), Houellebecq’s “body of work gives evidence that the abandonment by and continued absence of his parents, who divorced when he was young, deeply scarred him.” Michel Houellebecq is widely regarded as one of France’s best known 20th century novelists, and is sometimes thought of as that country’s most shocking one. External Website

Poets Jackie Kay (Poet) Jackie Kay Jacqueline Margaret Kay, (born 9 November 1961), She was adopted as a baby. Kay is a Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her works Other Lovers (1993), Trumpet (1998) and Red Dust Road (2011). Kay has won a number of awards, including the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998 and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year Award in 2011.Since 2016, she has been Scots Makar, the national poet laureate of Scotland. She was appointed as chancellor of the University of Salford in 2015. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Simone Biles' scathing testimony was a warning about power and complicity MSNBC 2022 In a Senate hearing Wednesday, Biles and several fellow gymnasts called out the FBI, USA Gymnastics and Olympic officials for ignoring sexual abuse in what Biles described as '...largest case of sexual abuse in the history of American sport'. In their testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, several current and former U.S. gymnasts outlined sexual abuse they suffered from former team doctor Larry Nassar, and they condemned people and institutions who they said ignored their pleas for help. The hearing was a follow-up to a Department of Justice report released in July that found FBI officials exhibited "extremely poor judgment" during the Nassar investigation. In response to the report, the FBI called its employees' actions as "inexcusable" and "appalling." Nassar pleaded guilty in 2017 to abusing 10 of the more than 265 women and girls who have come forward to say they were molested. He is serving up to 175 years in prison. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Our Fathers Cleared the Bush: Remembering Eyre Peninsula Jill Roe 2016 Renowned historian Jill Roe, whose grandparents were early settlers of South Australia's west coast, revisits her mid-century childhood in what was one of Australia's most remote regions, including living in kinship care with her grandparents. Rhythms of work and play were punctuated by moments - the annual show, a visit from young Queen Elizabeth - that connected farming lives, however briefly, to a changing world.With urbanisation comes uncertainties. As her story unfolds, Jill Roe contemplates the future of Eyre Peninsula and the role of regional Australia. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Comment: Is ‘lived experience’ a change-maker or ball and chain? Kenny Murray 2021 Kenneth Murray on the stigma associated with 'lived experience'. External Website

Television Shows Surface 2022 Surface (2022) is an American thriller series created for Apple TV by Veronica West. In Series 1, Sophie Ellis (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is suffering from amnesia after, apparently, jumping from a San Francisco bridge. As she struggles to recall her past life, she finds out that she has been embezzling money from her husband’s employer and hiding it an account under the name of Tess Caldwell. In Series 2, Sophie Ellis returns to England as Tess Caldwell. There she finds out she is the half-sister of a former lover, a member of the powerful Huntley family. After her mother was killed, the young Sophie/Tess was sent off by her father, Henry Huntley, to grow up in the UK care system. External Website

Radio & Podcast Patricia Cornwell This Cultural Life 2024 American crime writer Patricia Cornwell (b. 1956) talks in This Cultural Life about her time in foster care as a child. She also talks about her mother having been orphaned as a child too, and how that experience deeply impacted on her mother’s life, causing considerable distress over the years. External Website

Television Shows Clark 2022 An explanation for the origin of the term ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, forms part of the drama series Clark on Netflix. Clark includes the events of the 1973 Norrmalmstorg, Sweden heist during which a hostage rings the Prime Minister and says she feels safer with the bank robbers than with the police. The hostages went so far as to, apparently, raise money for their captors when the robbers were finally apprehended. Criminologist and psychiatrist, Nils Bejerot, coined the phrase ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ when he was asked for assistance by the Stockholm police. The rest of the series tells the story of career criminal Clark Olofsson, (b.1947, played by Bill Skarsgard), who, despite claiming to want freedom, has spent around half of his life in gaol. Clark was in foster care after his brutal father left the family and his mother was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. External Website

Films/Videos Santa Claus: The Movie 1985 Santa is exhausted by his ever-growing workload & he enlists an assistant, Patch. Santa befriends homeless orphan boy Joe & takes him for a ride in his sleigh. They meet wealthy orphan girl Cornelia, who befriends Joe. Patch designs a machine which falls apart & he resigns. External Website

Television Shows Land of Sin 2026 Land of Sin or Synden (2026) is a Swedish crime drama directed by Peter Gronlund. Krista Kosonen stars as Dani Anttila, a detective in Malmo, Sweden. One day she receives a phone call from the father of her former foster child Silas (Alexander Persson) to say he has gone missing. Ivar (Mats Mårtensson) doesn’t want the police involved but Dani & her new police partner, Malik (Mohammed Nour Oklah), travel to Bjare Peninsula to investigate. Silas’ body is found in a river but forensics determine he was forcibly drowned in the ocean & his body moved to the river to give the appearance of a suicide. As Dani & Malik investigate the crime, they talk to young people in a youth detention centre as Silas was there at some point. They also discover ongoing conflict between Ivar’s family & that of his brother, Elis (Peter Gantman) who wants the community to solve the murder & deal out retribution rather than have the case solved by the police. External Website

Films/Videos Intimate Relations 1996 Intimate Relations is a (1996) Canadian-British film, starring Rupert Graves as Harold Guppey, Julie Walters as Marjorie Beaslie and Laura Sadler (1980-2003) as 14-year-old Joyce Beaslie. When Harold first appears in the film after leaving the Merchant Navy, he tells his brother Morris, who hasn’t seen him since he was a child that he was in Australia for a bit and had been travelling ever since he left the 'home'. Morris’ wife tells Harold that he’s not welcome in their lives - he’s just not the sort of person they want around their child. The viewer discovers Harold's father died when he was 10 years old and he was 'sent away' - about 1933 (presumably to Australia, which would make him one of the migrant children) as his mum couldn't cope with his 'unruly behaviour'. The film is a black comedy about a young man who has an affair with the middle-aged housewife he is lodging with. The film takes place in the 1950s in the suburbs of London and is based on the true story of Albert Goozee who killed his landlady and her daughter, and either was or became a paedophile. He was sentenced to death but had a reprieve days before on grounds that he had been "provoked beyond reason", and the sentence commuted to life imprisonment. He was diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia and detained at Broadmoor. After he was released, he went on to commit more crimes including at aged 73, the indecent assault of two girls aged 12 and 13. This brings into question why this disturbing film was made into a black comedy. External Website

Films/Videos Superman Superman was first created as a comic book character in the 1930s. He was born on Krypton, named Kal-El and sent to Earth to save him before Krypton exploded. He was taken in by farmers Martha and Jonathan Kent who named him Clark Kent and knew that he was not 'normal'. His foster parents advised him to use his powers for good. Superman on film began in the 1940s with animated short film. The first big-budget film starring Christopher Reeves came in 1978. It spawned 3 sequels in 1980, 1983 and 1987. Superman Returns appeared in 2006 with Brandon Routh as Superman. External Website

Films/Videos Hugo 2011 Hugo is a 2011 American adventure drama film directed and produced by Martin Scorsese, with a screenplay adapted by John Logan. Hugo follows the story of Hugo Cabret, a young orphan secretly living in a Paris train station after losing both his father and neglectful uncle. As he maintains the station’s clocks and tries to repair a mysterious automaton linked to his father, Hugo’s search for meaning leads him to Georges Méliès, a once-renowned filmmaker, and Isabelle, a spirited girl who helps him uncover forgotten histories and find connection, hope, and a sense of belonging. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Quiet No More Nikki Barthelmess 2020 After surviving sexual assault by her father and six months in foster care, college freshman Victoria Parker is trying to move on with her life. She’s focusing on the positives—attending college, living on her own, repairing old relationships and making new ones, and getting involved with an abuse survivors activist group on campus. But everything’s thrown into disarray when a strange woman shows up, claiming to be Victoria’s aunt and asking Victoria to lie about what happened to her. With her father’s sentencing in a few months, Victoria’s nervous about having to share the truth of what happened with a judge. She’s not even sure if she has the strength to go through with it. But when her fellow club members begin pressuring her to speak out, Victoria has to decide how to share her story while remaining true to herself. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles The Vatican's Children 60 Minutes 2024 The Vatican’s Orphans is a 60 Minutes (America) segment on the thousands of Italian babies shipped to American on an “orphan visa” even though most of the babies weren’t actual orphans. 60 Minutes interviewed Maria Laurino who uncovered the orphan program from examining hundreds of documents in the Vatican’s archive. Sometimes the ‘consent’ form was signed by doctors and nurses who never told the mother; mothers were pressured to give up their babies and “in the worst cases [mothers] were told their child had died”. Laurino read letters in the archive from distressed mothers who had been told they could get their children back. According to 60 Minutes, the church charged $475 per child, “about $4500 today”. External Website