Films/Videos Enola Holmes 2020 16 year old Enola Holmes is left in the kinship care of her oldest brother, Mycroft, when her mother disappears. Enola travels to London in search of her mother, resisting attempts by Mycroft to have her sent to a finishing school. At the conclusion to the film, Enola decides to follow in the footsteps of her famous brother, Sherlock, and become a detective. External Website

Television Shows The Tower 2022 The Tower (2021) is a British police procedural adapted from Kate London’s Metropolitan book series. It stars Gemma Whelan as police officer Sarah Collins. In the 2nd series, there is a dangerous man who has been beating up his partner. Mark Brannon (Charley Palmer Rothwell) was in foster care as a child and is aided in evading the police by his friend, who was also in foster care. There is, as well, a less stereotypical story when a ‘posh’ man is charged child sexual abuse and murder. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1993 This is Maya Angelou's autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings published 1969 by Random House. The book follows Marguerite's (called "My" or "Maya" by her brother) life from the age of three to seventeen and the struggles she faces – particularly with racism – in the Southern United States. Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother Bailey are sent to live with their paternal grandmother (Momma) and disabled uncle (Uncle Willie) in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya and Bailey are haunted by their parents' abandonment throughout the book – they travel alone and are labeled like baggage. This is the first of her autobiographical books. Angelou structures her book so that it presents a series of lessons about how to resist racism and oppression. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Different Genes Claire Baldry 2017 Different Genes (2017) by Claire Baldry is the story of 61-year-old Louise who learns after the death of her mother that she was adopted. Louise and her new partner, Simon, then embark on a quest to discover the secrets of Louise’s past. The story begins in Claire Baldry’s home county of East Sussex and finishes in Kent where Louise & Simon visit Louise’s birth mother’s grave in Chatham. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Sixkill Robert B Parker 2012 A bad-boy movie star named Jumbo pushes the limits of his reputation when he's accused of rape and murder. When the Boston PD calls on Spencer, he meets Jumbo's young bodyguard, Zebulon Sixkill, and the two form an unlikely alliance. It's a high profile case for Spenser, but the Hollywood secrets he uncovers are sordidly unsavory- and not just those of the accused... Zebulon Sixkill was in kinship care as a child, living with his grandfather after his father disappeared and his mother died when Z was 10. External Website

Biography of Care Experienced People Raven Mother Jane Messer 2026 Raven Mother (2026) by Australian writer Jane Messer is a work of history, biography & memoir. Jane Messer set out to understand why her Jewish German grandmother Bella took her 2 children from Berlin & abandoned them in an English boarding school. After a few initial visits, Bella didn’t see her children for 13 years. Messer visited Berlin, Tel Aviv & Melbourne & along the way interviewed historians & other scholars in Germany as well in Israel. Along the way, she gains an understanding of how world events affect personal lives. External Website

Children's Fiction The Water Babies Charles Kingsley 2025 The Water Babies was first published in 1863. It tells the story of a poor orphan called Tom who is employed by the villainous Grimes, as a chimney sweep. One day he is accused of stealing from a rich household and runs away. As he is running he falls into a beautiful little stream and falls asleep, and becomes a Water Baby. In this new life, he meets all sorts of aquatic creatures, including an engaging old lobster, other water babies, and at last reaches St Branden's Isle where he encounters the fierce Mrs Bedonbyasyoudid and the motherly Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience My Last Confession Helen Fitzgerald 2009 An important character in this novel is 28 year old adoptee, Amanda, whose birth mother is murdered shortly after the 2 women meet for the first time. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Every one of us has a different story': a historic portrait of care system success The Guardian 2022 The brilliant and inspiring Lemn Sissay recently organised for 59 accomplished people who had been in care as children to meet for at the Foundling Museum in London for an historic photo. This includes the story of the event and a quotation from each of the 59 people who attended. External Website

Films/Videos The Buckingham Murders 2023 The Buckingham Murders (2023) is an Indian crime thriller. It was filmed in England and is in both English & Hindi, although most of the dialogue is in English. The film centres around the disappearance and murder of a local boy, Ishpreet. Jasmeet Bhamra, a British-Indian detective assigned to the case, discovers that Ishpreet was adopted from India. Initially, a young man with a history of drug addiction is arrested for the murder of Ishpreet. Later, suspicion falls on Ishpreet’s adoptive father. External Website

Television Shows Boy Swallows Universe (television series) 2024 In the adaptation of Trent Dalton’s 2019 novel, Boy Swallows Universe, significant Australian actor, Bryan Brown (b. 1947), plays the role of Slim Halliday, the ‘notorious crim’ who babysits and is a mentor for the protagonist 13-year-old Eli Bell (played by Felix Cameron). Halliday, also known as The Houdini of Bogo Road, was orphaned at age 12 and grew up in an Anglican orphanage. Convicted of killing a taxi-driver – which Slim long denied – Halliday was imprisoned in Brisbane’s infamous Boggo Road Gaol in 1952. Arthur ‘Slim’ Halliday was a family friend and always kind to Trent Dalton when he was growing up. He was also a wise man. Another character in Boy Swallows Universe who was orphaned as a child is Gary John Lawrence who becomes Lyle Orlik (Travis Fimmel). Lawrence was Trent Dalton’s stepfather and Lyle Orlike (played by Travis Fimmel) is Eli Bell’s stepfather in the book and television series. Gary John Lawrence was orphaned as a child, according to this Daily Mail Australia article. He was on the streets as a teenager and in gaol for the first time at age 20. In Boggo Road Gaol, Lawrence was highly regarded because he was head cook. “He was also known for having served the most time there without ever having been convicted of murder.” Lawrence taught himself to read while he was in prison. He’s remembered as a good stepfather to Trent Dalton and his brothers, as Lyle is in the television series. Gary Lawrence was released from prison for the last time in 2001. External Website

Films/Videos Gosford Park 2001 Gosford Park is a movie starring Maggie Smith, Ryan Phillippe, and Michael Gambon. The lives of upstairs guests and downstairs servants at a party in 1932 in a country house in England as they investigate the murder of the property owner. Clive Owens plays the role of a valet who grew up in an orphange. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles A digital archive of care experienced people in fiction, on screen and in real life IMO 2021 Care experienced journalist Sophia Hall spoke to Rosie Canning and Dee Michell, Founders of Care Experience and Culture about their care experienced led project and why they do what they do. External Website

Films/Videos Jojo Rabbitt 2019 Jojo Betzlers is a member of Hitler Youth during the latter stages of WWII. His pro-Nazi views are challenged when he finds out that his mother has a teenage Jewish girl in hiding upstairs. The film was inspired by the 2019 book by Christine Leunens, Caging Skies. External Website

Films/Videos Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story 2022 During the 2 part documentary (on Netflix) Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, Welsh journalist Meirion Jones, speaks of being concerned as a small child at the free access Jimmy Savile had to Duncroft Approved School in Surrey. He would visit his aunt there; she was the Head of the School which housed girls aged between 15 & 17 who were regarded as "emotionally disturbed". Surrey police in 2015 said there were 46 sexual assaults by Savile of 22 of those girls while Savile was visiting there. There are other allegations of Savile sexually abusing children in other children's homes too. External Website

Radio & Podcast Dickens vs Tolstoy Intelligence Squared 2023 This event by Intelligence Squared is an attempt to decide who is the greatest novelist—Charles Dickens (1812-1870) or Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)? Both Dickens and Tolstoy had experiences of displacement from family as children. Dickens was left in a foster care situation while his father was in debtors’ prison, and Tolstoy was orphaned at age 9. John Mullan argues for Dickens and Simon Schama for Tolstoy. The debate is augmented by a cast of actors who read from both authors’ works. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Glyph Percival Everett 1999 Glyph (1999) is novel by Percival Everett which features a displaced child. The narrator of Glyph is a 4-year-old boy, Ralph. By the time he is only 10 months old, Ralph is already reading books on philosophy, science and maths. He refuses to speak but can communicate by writing notes. After his parents take Ralph to see a child psychologist, the psychologist abducts Ralph and has him removed to a lab where she can study the baby. There are 2 more abductions in store for Ralph before he is retrieved by his mother. External Website

Children's Fiction The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling 1894 The tales in the book (as well as those in The Second Jungle Book, which followed in 1895 and includes five further stories about Mowgli) are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to teach moral lessons. A major theme in the book is abandonment followed by fostering, as in the life of Mowgli, echoing Kipling's own childhood. Mowgli was lost by his parents as a baby in the Indian jungle during a tiger attack, he is adopted by the Wolf Mother, Raksha and Father Wolf, who call him Mowgli (frog) because of his lack of fur and his refusal to sit still. Shere Khan the tiger demands that they give him the baby but the wolves refuse. Mowgli grows up with the pack, hunting with his brother wolves. In the pack, Mowgli learns he is able to stare down any wolf, and his unique ability to remove the painful thorns from the paws of his brothers is deeply appreciated as well. External Website

Films/Videos Wuthering Heights (2026 film) 2026 Wuthering Heights (1847) is the only novel by English writer Emily Bronte. The story features an orphan, Heathcliff, who is brought into the family of Mr Earnshaw & is treated as Earnshaw’s favourite. The novel has been adapted for film & television many times, the earliest being a film in 1920 directed by AV. Bramble. The first colour version of a film adaptation appeared in 1970 starring Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff. The most recent 2026 film adaptation has been written & directed by English filmmaker Emerald Fennell. It stars Australian Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and another Australian, Jacob Elordi, as Heathcliff. External Website

Activists Founder of the Adoptee Mentoring Society Angela Tucker 2022 In 2013, Angela Tucker located her biological parents. Using the film she had taken during the reunion, her husband Bryan Tucker created CLOSURE which streamed on Hulu in 2014, on Netflix from 2015 through to 2017 and on Amazon Prime from 2016 until 2021. After touring with CLOSURE in 2013, Angela began a video series called The Adopted Life Episodes in which teenage transracial adoptee talk about their experiences. She launched a podcast called The Adoptee Next Door and in 2022 founded the Adoptee Mentoring Society, a non-profit focuses on adoptees mentoring adoptees. In 2023, Tucker published You Should Be Grateful (2023) which centres on the experiences of adoptees, how they are often told they should be grateful, and how the insistence they be grateful can be silencing. External Website